Project description:Sphingobacterium spiritivorum has been rarely isolated from clinical specimens of immunocompromised patients, and there have been no case reports of S. spiritivorum infection in Korea to our knowledge. We report a case of S. spiritivorum bacteremia in a 68-yr-old woman, who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and subsequently received chemotherapy. One day after chemotherapy ended, her body temperature increased to 38.3?. A gram-negative bacillus was isolated in aerobic blood cultures and identified as S. spiritivorum by an automated biochemical system. A 16S rRNA sequencing analysis confirmed that the isolate was S. spiritivorum. The patient received antibiotic therapy for 11 days but died of septic shock. This is the first reported case of human S. spiritivorum infection in Korea. Although human infection is rare, S. spiritivorum can be a fatal opportunistic pathogen in immunocompromised patients.
Project description:Herein we report the case of a 10-year-old boy with an autosomal mosaic mutation who developed bacteremia. The causative agent was identified as Moraxella osloensis by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. In the pediatric population, there have been 13 case reports of infection attributed to M. osloensis and this is the fifth reported case of pediatric bacteremia due to M. osloensis. After Moraxella species infection was confirmed, the patient recovered with appropriate antimicrobial therapy. It is important to consider that M. osloensis can cause serious infections, such as bacteremia, in otherwise healthy children.
Project description:Moraxella osloensis is a rare causative organism of infections in humans, with most cases reported in cancer patients. We report the case of a 67-year-old Japanese man with advanced cancer of the pancreatic head and multiple liver metastases who developed fever with chills. Blood culture was found to be positive for Gram-negative bacilli that were aerobic, oxidase-positive, and catalase-positive. M. osloensis was identified by 16 rRNA gene sequencing. Prompt control of the infection was achieved by treatment with cefepime for 14 days, without the need for removal of the central venous catheter.
Project description:Cryptococcus adeliensis is a recently described new fungal species which has been isolated from decaying algae in Terre Adelie, Antarctica. We report the first known case of meningitis caused by C. adeliensis in a patient with acute myeloid leukemia undergoing allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantation.
Project description:A gram-negative alkaline phosphatase- and pyrrolidone peptidase-positive rod-shaped bacterium (CCUG 45702) was isolated from two aerobic blood cultures from a female cancer patient. No identification could be reached using phenotypic techniques. Amplification of the tRNA intergenic spacers revealed fragments with lengths of 116, 133, and 270 bp, but no such pattern was present in our reference library. Sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene revealed its identity as Moraxella atlantae, a species isolated only rarely and published only once as causing infection. In retrospect, the phenotypic characteristics fit the identification as M. atlantae (formerly known as CDC group M-3). Comparative 16S rRNA sequence analysis indicates that M. atlantae, M. lincolnii, and M. osloensis might constitute three separate genera within the MORAXELLACEAE: After treatment with amoxicillin-clavulanic acid for 2 days, fever subsided and the patient was dismissed.
Project description:We have used intramarrow injection/administration of cytarabine (Ara-C) instead of conventional intravenous approach to induce remission in an elderly patient with acute myelogenous leukemia. We show for the first time that the intramarrow injection of chemotherapeutic agents such as Ara-C can be used safely and effectively.
Project description:BackgroundThe bacterium Moraxella osloensis is a mutualistic symbiont of the slug-parasitic nematode Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita. In nature, P. hermaphrodita vectors M. osloensis into the shell cavity of the slug host Deroceras reticulatum in which the bacteria multiply and kill the slug. As M. osloensis is the main killing agent, genes expressed by M. osloensis in the slug are likely to play important roles in virulence. Studies on pathogenic interactions between bacteria and lower order hosts are few, but such studies have the potential to shed light on the evolution of bacterial virulence. Therefore, we investigated such an interaction by determining gene expression of M. osloensis in its slug host D. reticulatum by selectively capturing transcribed sequences.ResultsThirteen M. osloensis genes were identified to be up-regulated post infection in D. reticulatum. Compared to the in vitro expressed genes in the stationary phase, we found that genes of ubiquinone synthetase (ubiS) and acyl-coA synthetase (acs) were up-regulated in both D. reticulatum and stationary phase in vitro cultures, but the remaining 11 genes were exclusively expressed in D. reticulatum and are hence infection specific. Mutational analysis on genes of protein-disulfide isomerase (dsbC) and ubiS showed that the virulence of both mutants to slugs was markedly reduced and could be complemented. Further, compared to the growth rate of wild-type M. osloensis, the dsbC and ubiS mutants showed normal and reduced growth rate in vitro, respectively.ConclusionWe conclude that 11 out of the 13 up-regulated M. osloensis genes are infection specific. Distribution of these identified genes in various bacterial pathogens indicates that the virulence genes are conserved among different pathogen-host interactions. Mutagenesis, growth rate and virulence bioassays further confirmed that ubiS and dsbC genes play important roles in M. osloensis survival and virulence, respectively in D. reticulatum.