Torulopsis glabrata pneumonitis in patients with cancer. Report of three cases.

Abstract

HEMATOLOGIC neoplasms and their therapy frequently result in seriously altered host defenses, thus enhancing susceptibility to infection with opportunistic organisms. Torulopsis glabrata is a yeast-like organism commensal in the vagina of healthy women. 1 Human infection is rare, but may occur in patients with altered host defense mechanisms. The organism has been reported to cause esophagitis, 2 endometritis, 1 cystitis, 3 pyelonephritis, 3 wound infection, 3 and fungemia, 1,3,4 nd has been isolated from sputum and lung tissue at autopsy. 2 Torulopsis glabrata has been isolated at the Baltimore Cancer Research Center on surveillance cultures, 5 and occasionally from lung tissue at autopsy, but antemortem clinical pneumonitis has not previously been recognized. This organism was implicated as the cause of a fatal pneumonia in a severely myelosuppressed patient. 1 The cultures were obtained five hours postmortem and were not taken directly from the area of involvement; nevertheless, histological examination of