[Agranulocytosis due to cotrimoxazole in a seven-year-old boy (author's transl)]

A seven-year-old boy presented with agranulocytosis after receiving cotrimoxazole for eight days. Three years previously he had had another episode of untoward reaction to the drug with transient, mild leucocytopenia. But four periods of cotrimoxazole treatment in the intervening years had been tolerated without complications. There was no improvement in the critical state of the child while on broadspectrum antibiotics, until granulocytes reappeared in peripheral blood. This reaction to cotrimoxazole, although extremely rare, requires serial white blood cell and granulocyte counts during repeated and prolonged cotrimoxazole administration, if signs or symptoms of infection persist.