Diverse and atypical manifestations of Q fever in a metropolitan city hospital: Emerging role of next-generation sequencing for laboratory diagnosis of Coxiella burnetii

Author summaryWe describe the epidemiology and clinical manifestations of Q fever from a tertiary hospital in Shenzhen, a Southern Chinese metropolitan city in China. A total of 14 patients were confirmed to have Q fever during this study period. Notably, five of them were retrospectively diagnosed during case review or incidentally picked up because of another research project on patients with unexplained fever. Interestingly, some patients had rare manifestations of Q fever, such as heart failure and diffuse intracapillary proliferative glomerulonephritis and spontaneous bacterial peritonitis. One patient had concomitant Q fever and brucellosis. Half of the patients were diagnosed by traditional serological test, while the other half by PCR or next-generation sequencing. Clinicians should have a high index of suspicion of Q fever because of its diverse and atypical manifestations. The incidence of Q fever is likely to be underestimated. Next-generation sequencing is becoming increasingly important for diagnosis of culture-negative infections. Although Q fever has been widely reported in the rural areas of China, there is a paucity of data on the epidemiology and clinical characteristics of this disease in large metropolitan cities. In this study, we profile the epidemiology and clinical manifestations of Q fever from a tertiary hospital in Shenzhen, a Southern Chinese metropolitan city with a large immigrant population from other parts of China. A total of 14 patients were confirmed to have Q fever during a nine-year-and-six-month period, five of whom were retrospectively diagnosed during case review or incidentally picked up because of another research project on unexplained fever without localizing features. Some patients had the typical exposure histories and clinical features, while a few other patients had rare manifestations of Q fever, including one with heart failure and diffuse intracapillary proliferative glomerulonephritis, a patient presenting with a spontaneous bacterial peritonitis-like syndrome, and another one with concomitant Q fever and brucellosis. Using a combination of clinical manifestation, inflammatory marker levels, echocardiographic findings and serological or molecular test results, nine, three and two patients were diagnosed to have acute, chronic and convalescent Q fever, respectively. Seven, five and two patients were diagnosed to have Q fever by serological test, nested real-time PCR and next-generation sequencing respectively. Diverse and atypical manifestations are associated with Q fever. The incidence of Q fever is likely to be underestimated. Next-generation sequencing is becoming an important diagnostic modality for culture-negative infections, particularly those that the physicians fail to recognize clinically, such as Q fever.

Automated summary

In this study, the epidemiology and clinical manifestations of Q fever in a tertiary hospital in Shenzhen, China were described. The study found that Q fever patients had diverse and atypical clinical manifestations. The incidence of Q fever is likely to be underestimated and next-generation sequencing is becoming increasingly important for the diagnosis of culture-negative infections like Q fever.