Listeriosis at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Beijing, China: High Prevalence of Non-Clustered Healthcare-associated Cases among Adult Patients.

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Listeriosis at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Beijing, China: High Prevalence of Non-Clustered Healthcare-associated Cases among Adult Patients.

Clin Infect Dis. 2012 Nov 21;

Authors: Wang HL, Ghanem KG, Wang P, Yang S, Li TS

Abstract

Background.?Listeriosis is an emerging infectious disease associated with high mortality. There are few published reports from the Far East and developing countries. Our goal was to describe the clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients diagnosed with Listeria monocytogenes at a tertiary care hospital in Beijing, China.Methods.?Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH), an 1800-bed hospital, consists of two campuses that house different medical departments. We retrospectively reviewed all culture-proven cases of listeriosis occurring at PUMCH between 1999 and 2011. Point estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals are presented.Results.?There were 38 cases of listeriosis: 5 neonatal, 8 maternal, and 25 non-maternal cases. The median age of the adult non-maternal cases was 47 (range 18-79) years with a female predominance (72%). Forty percent (N=10) had an underlying rheumatic disease. Forty four percent (N=11) were healthcare-associated infections occurring a median of 20 (range 3-44) days after hospital admission. Only two of the eleven healthcare-associated cases clustered in space and time. One healthcare-associated case occurred in a patient receiving KHI-272 therapy, an oral, irreversible dual EGFR/HER2 inhibitor. The neonatal and maternal listeriosis cases were similar to those reported in the literature.Conclusions.?Non-clustered healthcare-associated cases of L. monocytogenes occurred at a large tertiary care hospital in Beijing, China. The source of these infections is unclear. Although rare, in the setting of immunosuppression, listeria should be considered in the differential diagnosis of healthcare-associated infections- even in the absence of a point-source outbreak.

PMID: 23175565 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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