Infection and Drug Resistance (Apr 2020)
Different Clinical Manifestations of Human Brucellosis in Pregnant Women: A Systematic Scoping Review of 521 Cases from 10 Countries
Abstract
Zhe Liu,1 Dawei Wei,1 Yanjun Li,1 Hao Zhou,1,2 Desheng Huang,1,3 Peng Guan1 1Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Impression Evidence Examination Technology, Criminal Investigation Police University of China, Shenyang, Liaoning, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Mathematics, School of Fundamental Sciences, China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Peng GuanDepartment of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, China Medical University, Shenyang 110122, Liaoning, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail [email protected]: This systematic scoping review aims to assess the frequency and severity of clinical manifestations of pregnant women with brucellosis.Methods: Three literature databases, PubMed, Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and two search engines (Google and Yahoo) were adopted to identify the relevant articles that published until 31 December 2019. Two investigators independently screened the publications and extracted the data; the case reports and case series which described at least two symptoms or clinical manifestations of pregnant women with brucellosis were included.Results: A total of 27 articles describing the information of 521 pregnant women with brucellosis were included. Serum agglutination test was the most common laboratory test in the diagnosis of brucellosis. A total of 36 clinical manifestations were extracted from the included articles, and the most common clinical manifestations were fever (400, 76.8%), joint pain/swelling/arthralgia (389, 74.7%), sweats (382, 73.3%), fatigue/asthenia/weakness (262, 50.3%) and back pain (189, 36.3%). Among the 32 included individual cases that with available obstetric outcome information, 10 (31.3%) suffered preterm delivery, 12 (37.5%) had an abortion and 3 (9.8%) had intrauterine fetal death.Conclusion: Brucellosis is popular and threatening for pregnant women. Regarding the localized body system complications, osteoarticular system was mostly involved, the obstetrics outcomes were severe among pregnant women with brucellosis. The detailed clinical and epidemiological characteristics in this scoping review may add a better and more complete understanding of the disease for both physicians and policy-makers, and provide evidence for timely diagnosis, adequate therapy and better prevention.Keywords: human brucellosis, pregnancy, signs and symptoms, review
