Korean J Lab Med.  2007 Oct;27(5):351-354. 10.3343/kjlm.2007.27.5.351.

A Case of Bacteremia by Atopobium rimae in a Patient with Liver Cirrhosis

• Chung HY
• Sung H
• Lee MY
• Yoon NS
• Lee SG
• Suh DJ
• Kim MN

• KMID: 1781534
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3343/kjlm.2007.27.5.351

Abstract

Atopobium rimae, previously Lactobacillus rimae, is a strictly anaerobic, non-spore forming grampositive rod which was frequently isolated from odontogenic infection. We report a case of A. rimae bacteremia. A 47-yr-old man with liver cirrhosis was admitted to the hospital via emergency room due to fever and chill. His abdominal and pelvic computed tomography revealed a small abscess near the left adrenal gland. Three sets of blood cultures were taken and non-spore forming, grampositive rods were detected in all anaerobic vials. This isolate grew small nonhemolytic, gray-white translucent colonies on Brucella blood agar and was obligatory anaerobic on air-tolerance test. This organism was negative for catalase, indole, nitrate-reduction and beta-lactamase and failed to identify by Vitek ANI card (bioMerieux, France). 16S rRNA sequences of this showed 99.8% homology of the published sequence of A. rimae (GenBank accession number AF292371). Aspirates of periadrenal abscess grew Escherichia coli and Peptostreptococcus micros. He was treated with metronidazole and imipenem and follow-up cultures of blood were negative at days 4 and 10. To our knowledge, this is the first report of bacteremia of A. rimae.

Keyword

Atopobium rimae; Bacteremia; l6S rRNA

MeSH Terms

*Actinobacteria/classification/genetics/isolation & purification
Bacteremia/diagnosis/*microbiology/therapy
Gram-Positive Bacterial Infections/diagnosis/*microbiology/therapy
Humans
Liver Cirrhosis/*complications
Male
Middle Aged
Phylogeny
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S/analysis
Sequence Analysis, RNA

Figure

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  Fig. 1. Culture characteristics of Atopobium rimae. (A) 1-2 mm sized gray-whitish translucent non-hemolytic colonies on Brucella agar after 4 days incubation. (B) Microscopic findings showing gram-positive rods (Gram stain, ×1,000).

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  Fig. 2. Unrooted tree showing the phylogenetic relationships of the current isolate (0704AA6591) and closely related gram-positive bacteria. The tree constructed using the neighbour-joining method was based on a comparison of 1,261 bp. The phylogenetic tree was generated by ClustalW and visualized by TreeView. Distances are presented as number of substitutions per site (a scale of ‘0.1’ means 0.1 nucleotide substitution per site).

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