A 25 year old woman developed a right pleural effusion 6 weeks after commencement of short course chemotherapy for left sided tuberculous pleural effusion. Since the patient improved following continuation of the same treatment, it is presumed to be a case of paradoxical response to anti-tuberculosis treatment.

INTRODUCTION An undiagnosed exudative pleural effusion is often a difficult diagnostic dilemma that needs further histological study for a definitive etiological diagnosis. Video assisted rigid thoracoscopy is a minimally invasive procedure with a minor morbidity and mortality risk that could resolve this problem. METHODS Between January 2010 and December 2011, we performed thoracoscopy in 26...

Though pulmonary tuberculosis is the common presentation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, extra-pulmonary tuberculosis is also a growing problem worldwide. Tuberculous pleural effusion is the second frequent form of extra-pulmonary presentation after tuberculous lymphadenitis and if untreated up to 65% of patients with tubercular pleural effusions will eventually develop active TB. Trad...

Twenty-three patients with nonspecific pleuritis were studied to determine clinical outcome. After a mean follow-up period of 6 months (1 to 36 months), a diagnosis was reached in 17 patients, while 6 patients remained unknown. The causes of the nonspecific pleuritis diagnosed on initial pleural biopsy were tuberculosis (11 patients, 48%), neoplasm (2 patients, 8.7%), parapneumonic effusion (1 ...

Tuberculosis pleurisy was induced by inoculation of virulent (H37Rv strain or Erdman strain) or attenuated (H37Ra strain) green-fluorescent protein-expressing Mycobacterium tuberculosis into guinea pigs that had or had not been vaccinated with Bacille-Calmette Guérin (BCG). Pleural fluid and cells were analyzed for phagosome-lysosome (P-L) fusion, on the basis of confocal microscopy, intracellu...

BACKGROUND Hypercalcemia is common in primary hyperparathyroidism malignancies and even in tuberculosis. Interestingly, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) rarely presents with hypercalcemia. CASE REPORT We describe an interesting case of SLE in a patient who was otherwise thought to have either tuberculosis or a malignancy. The patient initially presented with feeling unwell, with generalized...

The cause of pleural effusion was studied in 300 consecutive patients by clinical examination and laboratory tests. The three most common causes were found to be cancer 117 cases (metastatic 65, bronchogenic 34, mesothelioma 10, lymphoma 7, other 1); tuberculous infection 53; and bacterial infection 38. The cause was not found in 62 patients. Cancer diagnosis was established by cytological exam...

Results: Pleural neopterin levels were significantly higher in patients with pleural TB than patients with malignancy (p< 0.001). Pleural ADA levels were significantly higher in patients with pleural TB than patients with malignancy (p< 0.001) and patients with benign non-tuberculosis effusions (p< 0.001). The mean levels of ADA and neopterin in pleural effusion were evaluated according to thei...

T-lymphocytes previously sensitized by an antigen undergo blastic transformation and produce IFN’r when stimulated by the same antigen. We studied the lymphoblastic response to PPD and IFNT production in pleural fluid and peripheral blood of 41 patients (15 with tuberculosis pleural effusion, 13 with nontuberculous pleurisy and positive tuberculin skin test, and 13 with tuberculin-negative nont...

Tuberculous pleurisy is a severe inflammatory response induced by Mycobacterium tuberculosis organisms that have escaped from lung granulomata into the pleural space during pulmonary infection. We have used the guinea pig model of tuberculous pleurisy to examine several aspects of the immune response to this antigen-specific inflammatory event. Pleurisy was induced by injection of heat-killed M...