ArticleEmerging microbes & infections2020
Diagnosing Balamuthia mandrillaris encephalitis via next-generation sequencing in a 13-year-old girl.
Article in Emerging microbes & infections, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- The first reported case ofFrontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Free-Living Amoebae Infections: Case Reports Identified at a Reference Parasitology Laboratory in Argentina.Acta parasitologica · 2025Article
- Next-Generation Sequencing for Diagnosis of Fatal Balamuthia Amoebic Encephalitis: A Case Report.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The role of plasma metagenomic sequencing in identification of Balamuthia mandrillaris encephalitis.Acta neuropathologica communications · 2025Article
- Modelling amoebic brain infection caused by Balamuthia mandrillaris using a human cerebral organoid.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2024Article
- Functional annotation and comparative genomics analysis of Balamuthia mandrillaris reveals potential virulence-related genes.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Diagnosing Balamuthia mandrillaris amebic meningoencephalitis in a 64-year-old woman from the Southwest of China.Parasites, hosts and diseases · 2023Article
- Phenotypic assay for cytotoxicity assessment ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Pathogenic free-living amoebic encephalitis from 48 cases in China: A systematic review.Frontiers in neurology · 2023Review
- Distribution and Current State of Molecular Genetic Characterization in Pathogenic Free-Living Amoebae.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- SubacuteThe Journal of international medical research · 2022Article
- Diagnosis ofAnnals of laboratory medicine · 2022Article
- Balamuthia spinosa n. sp. (Amoebozoa, Discosea) from the brackish-water sediments of Nivå Bay (Baltic Sea, The Sound) - a novel potential vector of Legionella pneumophila in the environment.Parasitology research · 2022Article
- A patient with granulomatous amoebic encephalitis caused by Balamuthia mandrillaris survived with two excisions and medication.BMC infectious diseases · 2022Article
- Case Report and Literature Review: Bacterial Meningoencephalitis or Not?Frontiers in pediatrics · 2022Article
- Direct Metagenomic Diagnosis of Community-Acquired Meningitis: State of the Art.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Review
- Metagenomic Next-Generation Sequencing for Diagnosis of Pediatric Meningitis and Encephalitis: A Review.Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society · 2021Review
- Various brain-eating amoebae: the protozoa, the pathogenesis, and the disease.Frontiers of medicine · 2021Review
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Balamuthia amoebic encephalitis has a subacute-to-chronic course and is almost invariably fatal owing to delayed diagnosis and a lack of effective therapy. Here, we report a 13-year-old girl with cutaneous lesions and multifocal granulomatous encephalitis. The patient underwent a series of tests and was suspected as having tuberculosis. She was treated with various empiric therapies without improvement. She was finally correctly diagnosed via next-generation sequencing of the cerebrospinal fluid. The patient deteriorated rapidly and died 2 months after being diagnosed with Balamuthia mandrillaris encephalitis. This study highlights the important clinical significance of next-generation sequencing, which provides better diagnostic testing for unexplained paediatric encephalitis, especially that caused by rare or emerging pathogens.
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