Abstract
Ebestien-barr virus (EBV) is a wide spread herpesvirus, with up to 95% exposure rate in the adult population. Less than 10% of exposed population develop clinical manifestation. EBV infection is usually a benign infection, but in rare cases it can cause complications with lasting effects. EBV is also a very rare cause of encephalitis, accounting for less than 5% of clinical viral meningoencephalitis cases. It is also very rare for such a commonly presenting virus to cause secondary Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), or Gillian barre syndrome (GBS), not to mention fatality.
We describe a case of a 5 years old girl who presented initially with acute otitis media (AOM) at top of chronic and Infectious mononucleosis with expected discharge after IV antibiotic course, from that point she rapidly deteriorated with development of EBV complications in the form of encephalitis and then developed GBS and secondary HLH, she died after one month of admission due to these complications.
Although each of described rare complication is documented in literature, the combination of all of these findings was not reported previously.