Rice body formation due to Haemophilus parainfluenza-associated chronic arthropathy

Pavan Bhat; Sahiba Khurana; Rachel Fanaroff; Scott M Adams; Ronald P Rabinowitz

doi:10.1016/j.idcr.2020.e01030

Rice body formation due to Haemophilus parainfluenza-associated chronic arthropathy

IDCases. 2020 Dec 18:23:e01030. doi: 10.1016/j.idcr.2020.e01030. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Pavan Bhat¹, Sahiba Khurana², Rachel Fanaroff³, Scott M Adams⁴, Ronald P Rabinowitz⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
² Department of Internal Medicine, MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center, Baltimore, MD, USA.
³ Department of Pathology, University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁴ Orthopaedic Associates of Central Maryland, Catonsville, MD, USA.
⁵ Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Maryland School of Medicine, The R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, Section of Infectious Diseases, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Abstract

A 68-year-old woman with a medical history significant for psoriatic arthritis was found to have an enlarged, painful lump on her left hip 15 months after intramedullary rod placement for a left subtrochanteric femur fracture sustained in a fall. Histopathological findings showed rice body formation (RBF) with concurrent H. parainfluenza. RBF is a relatively rare arthropathy of a subset of chronic inflammatory disease such as rheumatoid arthritis or tuberculous arthropathy. RBF associated with psoriatic arthritis or orthopedic hardware placement has been reported in a handful of cases in the literature but there has not been any definitive evidence for RBF as a result of Haemophilus parainfluenza infections and is a rather unusual characteristic of this case.

Keywords: Chronic arthropathy; Haemophilus parainfluenza; Immunosuppressed; Rice body formation.

Publication types

Case Reports