BRUCELLOSIS AND DENGUE FEVER – A CO-INFECTION OR CROSS REACTIVITY?

Brucellosis and Dengue fever can present with acute febrile illness with other nonspecific symptoms and share common haematological and biochemical abnormalities making their clinical differentiation a diagnostic challenge. We present two cases admitted with acute febrile illness and other nonspecific symptoms. In both patients diagnosis of brucellosis was confirmed by positive blood culture and or positive serology by tube agglutination test method, in both patients Dengue virus IgM and or IgG was also positive. This may represent co-infection or cross-reactivity between serological tests used for the diagnosis of brucellosis and dengue fever. To the best of our knowledge this has not been previously reported. Both these cases are presented here to share our experience with others