Clostridium symbiosum Isolated from Blood

Hee Jae Huh; Seung Tae Lee; Jang Ho Lee; Chang Seok Ki; Nam Yong Lee

doi:10.5145/KJCM.2010.13.2.90

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Huh, Lee, Lee, Ki, and Lee: Clostridium symbiosum Isolated from Blood

Original Article

Korean J Clin Microbiol 2010;13(2):90-92.

Published online: 21 June 2010

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5145/KJCM.2010.13.2.90

Clostridium symbiosum Isolated from Blood

Hee Jae Huh, Seung Tae Lee, Jang Ho Lee, Chang Seok Ki, Nam Yong Lee

Department of Laboratory Medicine and Genetics, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Correspondence: Nam Yong Lee, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Genetics, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, 50, Irwon-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 135-710, Korea. (Tel) 82-2-3410-2706, (Fax) 82-2-3410-2719, (E-mail) mi-cro.lee@samsung.com

Received 20 January 2010 Revised 24 March 2010 Accepted 20 April 2010

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Clostridium symbiosum was isolated from the blood of a 61-year-old immunocompromised woman who had diagnosed ovarian cancer with multiple metastases and who had developed persistent tachycardia. A blood culture was drawn from the peripherally inserted central catheter, and non-spore-forming gram-negative rods were detected in an anaerobic vial. The organism showed tiny and pinpoint colonies and was unidentified by Vitek II (bioMérieux, France). The 16S rRNA gene sequence showed a 99.4% identity with C. symbiosum. To our knowledge, this represents the first report of C. symbiosum isolation in Korea.

Keywords: Clostridium symbiosum, Immunocompromised patient, Gram's stain, 16S rRNA sequencing

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Fig. 1.

Tiny and pinpoint Clostridium symbiosum colonies grown for 48 hours on Brucella agar.

Fig. 2.

Gram stain of Clostridium symbiosum showed Gram negative rod-shaped bacteria under a light microscope (×1,000).

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