A rare case of community-acquired necrotizing pneumonia in a patient treated with adalimumab therapy.
Branavan Ragunanthan, Bachar Botrus, Bibek Shrestha, Jason Kim, Hend Elsaghir, Caitlyn Hollingshead, Fadi Safi
BMC pulmonary medicine · 2026-02
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Necrotizing pneumonia is a life-threatening complication of community-acquired pneumonia managed in an intensive care setting with a multitude of diagnostic modalities and numerous therapeutic interventions.remains an extremely uncommon organism known to cause necrotizing pneumonia, and of the cases reported, are almost entirely found in immunocompromised hosts.
CASE DETAILS: Here, we report a case of Pseudomonas aeruginosa community-acquired necrotizing pneumonia in a host receiving adalimumab therapy that ultimately was not able to be healed despite targeted antibiotics.
CONCLUSION: Adalimumab is known to immunosuppress patients and increase risk of tuberculosis and fungal disease, but have unclear associations with other infections. This case exemplifies a rare encounter ofnecrotizing pneumonia in a patient on adalimumab therapy contracted through the community. Treatment of necrotizing pneumonia in patients on adalimumab therapy does not differ significantly from other cases of non-adalimumab associated necrotizing pneumonia.