Open AccessAn extremely rare case of delusional parasitosis in a chronic hepatitis C patient during pegylated interferon alpha-2b and ribavirin treatment
Author(s) -
Geert Robaeys,
Jozef De Bie,
Marc Van Ranst,
Frank Buntinx
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
world journal of gastroenterology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.427
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 2219-2840
pISSN - 1007-9327
DOI - 10.3748/wjg.v13.i16.2379
Subject(s) - ribavirin , pegylated interferon , medicine , alpha interferon , hepatitis c , gastroenterology , chronic hepatitis , interferon , depression (economics) , immunology , virology , virus , economics , macroeconomics
During treatment of chronic hepatitis C patients with interferon and ribavirin, a lot of side effects are described. Twenty-three percent to 44% of patients develop depression. A minority of patients evolve to psychosis. To the best of our knowledge, no cases of psychogenic parasitosis occurring during interferon therapy have been described in the literature. We present a 49-year-old woman who developed a delusional parasitosis during treatment with pegylated interferon alpha-2b weekly and ribavirin. She complained of seeing parasites and the larvae of fleas in her stools. This could not be confirmed by any technical examination. All the complaints disappeared after stopping pegylated interferon alpha-2b and reappeared after restarting it. She had a complete sustained viral response.