The new issue of the journal BMJ Case Reports features the case study of a woman who sought medical assistance due to severe and persistent pain in her left hip, knee, and thigh after having gotten her left thigh tattooed some months earlier.
In 2009, she had a double lung transplant that needed long-term immunosuppressant therapy, to avoid a transplant rejection response.
This, of course, meant that her entire immune system was disrupted, and it would not react to foreign agents inside the body in the same way that it normally would.
9 days after getting this tattoo, she started having severe pain in her left knee and thigh, the management of which required strong painkillers.
In time, the symptoms became less severe. But after 10 months, they had not wholly disappeared.
"Her pain was still troublesome, constant in nature, and causing regular sleep disturbance," write the authors of the case analysis.