What can we learn and what do we need to know amidst the iatrogenic outbreak of Exserohilum rostratum meningitis?

Insights into fungal pathogenesis from the iatrogenic epidemic of Exserohilum rostratum fungal meningitis.

In 2012 the medical community in the United States faced an unprecedented outbreak of fungal meningitis caused by Exserohilum rostratum associated with injections of contaminated lots of methyprednilsone acetate. Rapid response by public health authorities led to the identification of the cause of the outbreak and the epidemic quickly abated, even though new cases were still being reported many...

Exserohilum rostratum fungal meningitis associated with methylprednisolone injections.

In October 2012, the CDC reported an outbreak of fungal meningitis associated with methylprednisolone injections [1]. Although the index case had Aspergillus fumigatus meningitis [2], subsequent reports indicated that the majority of affected patients had meningitis caused by Exserohilum rostratum, an extremely rare cause of human fungal disease [1,3,4]. The outbreak is presumably the result of...

Diagnostic and therapeutic challenges for dermatologists: What shall we do when we don’t know what to do?

What shall we do when we have done everything we could for the diagnosis and treatment of a patient, but were not successful? What shall we do when there is no definite treatment for a patient? What shall we do when we have no diagnosis or treatment for a patient? Some useful suggestions are presented here to get rid of these situations.

Questionable utility of galactomannan testing for diagnosis of Exserohilum rostratum infection.

With interest, we read the paper by Korem et al. describing a case of Exserohilum rostratum sinusitis from which serum galactomannan (GM) levels were elevated upon diagnosis (1). They further demonstrated that the extract of the E. rostratum clinical isolate yielded positive GM results comparable to those generated by Aspergillus fumigatus. The authors concluded that the GM testing, approved by...

Do We Know What We Do not Know? A Response to Celine Bonnet