Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 7, 2015; 21(21): 6491-6498
Published online Jun 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i21.6491
Nocardia infections among immunomodulated inflammatory bowel disease patients: A review
Cândida Abreu, Nuno Rocha-Pereira, António Sarmento, Fernando Magro
Cândida Abreu, Nuno Rocha-Pereira, António Sarmento, Department of Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Medicine, Centro Hospitalar S. João, 4200 Porto, Portugal
Cândida Abreu, Nuno Rocha-Pereira, António Sarmento, Nephrology Research and Development Unit, University of Porto, 4200 Porto, Portugal
Fernando Magro, Department of Gastroenterology, Faculty of Medicine, Centro Hospitalar S. João, 4200 Porto, Portugal
Fernando Magro, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, 4200 Porto, Portugal
Fernando Magro, MedInUP, Center for Drug Discovery and Innovative Medicines, University of Porto, 4200 Porto, Portugal
Author contributions: Abreu C and Magro F contributed to the conception and design of the paper; Abreu C and Rocha-Pereira N on the acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data and draft of the article; Sarmento A and Magro F revised it critically for valuable intellectual content.
Conflict-of-interest: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Fernando Magro, PhD, Department of Gastroenterology, Faculty of Medicine, Centro Hospitalar S. João, Alameda Hernani Monteiro, 4200 Porto, Portugal. fm@med.up.pt
Telephone: +35-191-3805251 Fax: +35-122-5513603
Received: January 8, 2015
Peer-review started: January 8, 2015
First decision: January 22, 2015
Revised: March 10, 2015
Accepted: March 31, 2015
Article in press: March 31, 2015
Published online: June 7, 2015
Processing time: 154 Days and 7.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Opportunistic infections in immunomodulated patients with inflammatory diseases has gained renewed interest because of the new biological therapies. Concerning inflammatory bowel disease, in particular anti-tumor necrosis factor drugs, turned granulomatous infection diseases a real risk. The awareness and knowledge about nocardiosis, a rare but severe granulomatous infection, is probably lacking for the majority of doctors treating these patients. Our aim is to increase the awareness about the infection and review the published cases in this particular group of patients. We would like that our reads increase knowledge about clinical manifestations and up-to-date treatment, be aware of the risk of the disease and when to suspect nocardiosis.