Work

Mycobacterium haemophilum: Emerging or Underdiagnosed in Brazil?

Year: 2002

Type: article

Abstract: To the Editor: Mycobacterium haemophilum was first described in 1978 by Sompolinsky et al. (1) as the cause of cutaneous infections in a patient with Hodgkin disease.Since then, fewer than 100 cases have been reported worldwide, mostly among immunocompromised patients (2), although M. haemophilum infection has also been described in immunocompetent patients as the cause of cervical, submandibular, and perihilar lymphadenopathy in children and of pulmonary nodules in an adult (3-5).Cases have been reported from United States, Australia, Canada, France, Israel, and the United Kingdom, but to date no reports have originated in South America.The most frequent clinical sign of M. haemophilum infection in adults is a skin or joint lesion.Less common sites for isolation of M. haemophilum include the respiratory tract, blood, bone marrow, bone, and central venous catheters (2,6).M. haemophilum is unique among Mycobacterium species owing to its special growth requirements: it grows best at 30°C and requires an iron supplement (hemin or ferric ammonium citrate).We report here the characterization of three strains of M. haemophilum isolated from patients living in three states in two distinct regions of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (southeast region) and Bahia (northeast region).The first strain was detected in Rio de Janeiro in December 2000 from a blood culture of a 67-year-old man who had received a kidney transplant in 1988 at the age of 55 years and was undergoing immunosuppressive treatment with prednisolone and mycophenolate mofetil.The second strain was detected in São Paulo in March 2001

Source: Emerging infectious diseases

DOI: 10.3201/eid0811.020492