Systemic mycosis due to Trichosporon cutaneum: a report of two additional cases

Two additional cases of systemic mycosis due to Trichosporon cutaneum are reported and are compared with the previously published case of Rivera and Cangir. Both patients (a four-year-old male and a 57-year-old female) had acute leukemia for which they were receiving chemotherapy, and both presented with fever that was unresponsive to conventional antibiotics. Both had positive blood cultures for Trichosporon cutaneum. The disease was further documented in the four-year-old male by renal biopsy and by bone marrow culture; he was treated with apparent success with amphotericin B. However, the 57-year-old female died shortly after the begining of similar treatment, and autopsy demonstrated involvement of the left kidney, spleen, bone marrow, and liver. The organism in both these cases, as well as the case of Rivera and Cangir, exhibited both hyphal and yeastlike forms in tissue sections. We believe that the therapeutic success in the case of the four-year-old male was primarily related to his remission from leukemia.