Serial Changes Of Serum Cytokine In A Pediatric Patient With Severe Fever With Thrombocytopenia Syndrome

© 2016 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. www.pidj.com | 359 Serial Changes of Serum Cytokine in a Pediatric Patient with Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome study, on fever within 6 weeks after a tick bite in Slovenian children <15 years, a tick-transmitted infection was detected in 28 (53%) of 53 children with TBE being most frequent (18 cases, 64%) and only 1 case (4%) of probable HGA (presence of antibodies without a subsequent 4-fold increase). A seroprevalence study among 143 children and young adults in Slovenia demonstrated the presence of antibodies to A. phagocytophilum in 15.4% of study subjects, whereas study on vectors revealed that 3.2% of the I. ricinus ticks contained nucleotide sequences of portions of the bacterial groESL heat shock operon identical to those previously determined for human patients with HGA from Slovenia. Although rare, HGA should be suspected in a child with fever after a tick bite, especially when leukopenia and/or thrombocytopenia, elevated C-reactive protein levels and increased liver function tests are present and treatment with doxycycline should be given in microbiologically confirmed cases.