Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 21, 2016; 22(39): 8844-8848
Published online Oct 21, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i39.8844
Cyclophosphamide-associated enteritis: A rare association with severe enteritis
Linda S Yang, Karla Cameron, Tim Papaluca, Chamara Basnayake, Louise Jackett, Penelope McKelvie, David Goodman, Barbara Demediuk, Sally J Bell, Alexander J Thompson
Linda S Yang, Karla Cameron, Tim Papaluca, Chamara Basnayake, Barbara Demediuk, Sally J Bell, Alexander J Thompson, Department of Gastroenterology, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia
Louise Jackett, Penelope McKelvie, Department of Pathology, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia
David Goodman, Department of Nephrology, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia
Author contributions: Yang LS wrote the paper; Yang LS and Cameron K collected the clinical data; Papaluca T, Basnayake C, Goodman D, Demediuk B, Bell SJ and Thompson AJ were the treating team and supervised the manuscript writing; Jackett L and McKelvie P provided the figures.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest or funding from any organisation to disclose.
Institutional review board statement: This case report was exempt from the Institutional Review Board standards at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne in Australia.
Informed consent statement: A written informed consent was waived by the Institutional Review Board given this case report presents no more than minimal risk to the patient involved.
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: Linda S Yang, MBBS, Department of Gastroenterology, St. Vincent’s Hospital, 41 Victoria Pde, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia. lindaviva0912@gmail.com
Telephone: +61-3-425726761 Fax: +61-3-92313590
Received: November 3, 2015
Peer-review started: November 4, 2015
First decision: December 11, 2015
Revised: January 5, 2016
Accepted: March 18, 2016
Article in press: March 18, 2016
Published online: October 21, 2016
Abstract

Cyclophosphamide is a potent cytotoxic agent used in many clinical settings. The main risks of cyclophosphamide therapy include hematological disorders, infertility, hemorrhagic cystitis and malignancies. Gastrointestinal side effects reported to date are often non-specific and not severe. We present the first case of a fatal small bowel enteritis and pan-colitis which appears to be associated with cyclophosphamide. We aim to raise the readers’ awareness of this significant adverse event to facilitate clinical suspicion and early recognition in potential future cases.

Keywords: Enteritis, Colitis, Cyclophosphamide, Small bowel, Pan-colitis

Core tip: The well-known adverse effects associated with cyclophosphamide include bone marrow suppression, hemorrhagic cystitis and malignancies. This case report describes the first case of fatal and irreversible small bowel enteritis and pan-colitis associated with cyclophosphamide.