Prevalence and risk factors of fungal infections in leukemia patients treated with chemotherapy
Abstract
Fungal diseases are serious complications in the treatment of leukemia patients and are linked to a high morbidity and mortality rate. Therefore, a correct definition of the risk level of fungal infections helps to improve strategies for the use of an antifungal prophylactic regimen. In the current study; we compared the prevalence of fungal infections pre and during chemotherapy in patients newly diagnosed with leukemia at Tishreen University Hospital in Lattakia, Syria. We investigated the risk factors for fungal infections in these patients during chemotherapy. Fungal infections diagnosis relied on both clinical symptoms and culture results on selective media (sabouraud dextrose agar and potato dextrose agar). We included fifty leukemia patients in this study (19 ALL, 14 AML, 12 CLL, and 5 CML). Fungal infections appeared in 11 patients (22%) before starting chemotherapy, all of these infections were of the genus Candida. While these infections appeared in 30 patients (60%) during chemotherapy, 48% were Candida, 10% were Rhizopus, and 2% were Aspergillus. Our results showed that the difference was significant in the percentage of fungal infections between pre-chemotherapy and during chemotherapy (p-value = 0.0001). While using the chi-square test or Fisher exact test, we found statistically significant differences between the two groups classified according to the incidence of fungal infections during chemotherapy in terms of smoking (p = 0.01), corticosteroid therapy (p = 0.0001), and the combination of the two previous risk factors (p = 0.0001), but there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in terms of gender (p = 0.2), age (p = 0.1), and type of leukemia (p = 0.073).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The authors retain the copyright and grant the right to publish in the magazine for the first time with the transfer of the commercial right to Tishreen University Journal for Research and Scientific Studies - Health Sciences Series
Under a CC BY- NC-SA 04 license that allows others to share the work with of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Authors can use a copy of their articles in their scientific activity, and on their scientific websites, provided that the place of publication is indicted in Tishreen University Journal for Research and Scientific Studies - Health Sciences Series . The Readers have the right to send, print and subscribe to the initial version of the article, and the title of Tishreen University Journal for Research and Scientific Studies - Health Sciences Series Publisher
journal uses a CC BY-NC-SA license which mean
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
- The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
- ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.