Cryptococcal Meningitis in a Teenage Boy with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

There are approximately 1 million new cases of cryptococcal meningitis each year and most cases occur among people with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. There have been rare case reports worldwide of pediatric patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) diagnosed with the cryptococcal infection. We present a teenage boy with SLE and severe lymphopenia who developed cryptococcal meningitis to demonstrate the importance of considering this diagnosis in the absence of characteristic neurological signs and symptoms.