Infection with Yersinia enterocolitica in patients with iron overload.

Yersinia enterocolitica commonly causes fever and mild gastroenteritis' but occasionally causes severe illness, particularly in patients with iron overload in whom its virulence is enhanced.2 Desferrioxamine used therapeutically may potentiate the growth of yersinia, which uses desferrioxamine as a siderophore to chelate iron.3 We describe three patients with transfusional haemosiderosis and infection with Y enterocolitica.