Tuberculosis Pleurisy in a Case of Burkitt Lymphoma Secondary to Rituksimab Treatment

Abstract

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) accounts for 60% of childhood lymphomas and is the fourth most common childhood malignancy. Burkitt’s lymphoma (BL) accounts for 40% of NHLs. Burkitt’s lymphoma is mostly of abdominal origin and has the highest cell count doubling rate. Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the chronic diseases caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacillus, which has high morbidity and mortality and occurs most frequently in the lung. In this case report, we present a patient with a previous diagnosis of BL who developed pleural effusion while under rituximab-ifosfamide carboplatin etoposide treatment, and TB polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was revealed to be positive in the TB PCR screening test of the pleural fluid. To our knowledge, there is no previous study of the coexistence of BL and TB pleurisy in the literature. When pleural effusion develops in patients with BL under chemotherapy treatment, it should be kept in mind that TB may be present, and anti-TB treatment should be started as soon as the diagnosis is made. There is limited information in the literature about the frequency of tuberculous pleurisy in patients with BL.

Keywords

• burkitt’s lymphoma
• tuberculosis
• pleural effusion
• tuberculous pleurisy
• rituksimab