Brachybacterium nesterenkovii isolated from a human blood culture-a first report

T Brummaier; P Hinfothong; N L Soe; J Tongmanakit; W Watthanaworawit; C Ling

doi:10.1016/j.nmni.2020.100699

Brachybacterium nesterenkovii isolated from a human blood culture-a first report

New Microbes New Infect. 2020 May 20:36:100699. doi: 10.1016/j.nmni.2020.100699. eCollection 2020 Jul.

Authors

T Brummaier^{1

2

3

4}, P Hinfothong¹, N L Soe¹, J Tongmanakit¹, W Watthanaworawit¹, C Ling^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Mae Sot, Thailand.
² Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
³ Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland.
⁴ University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.

Abstract

Brachybacterium is a genus of Gram-positive bacteria that rarely causes infections in humans. Here we report the case of an 8-month-old infant who presented with an acute febrile illness. During the diagnostic process, a blood culture was positive with Gram-positive cocci that were identified as Brachybacterium nesterenkovii by MALDI-TOF. As a result of the unclear clinical significance of this isolate and the continuous febrile state, a second blood culture was taken and returned B. nesterenkovii once more. To our knowledge this is the first time that B. nesterenkovii has been isolated from human blood cultures during the course of a systemic infection.

Keywords: Blood culture; Brachybacterium nesterenkovii; bloodstream infection; human; matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry.