Wound infection caused by Neisseria zoodegmatis, a zoonotic pathogen: a case report.

The isolation of Neisseria zoodegmatis from a 63-year-old female presenting to the emergency department following a cat bite injury to her right hand is described in this report. N. zoodegmatis , also known as Centers for Disease Control (CDC) group EF-4b, is considered to be a zoonotic pathogen, and is usually associated with dog or cat bites. Despite the potential of this organism to cause serious soft tissue infections, it can be overlooked in routine clinical laboratories due to its slow growth characteristics and when the history of animal bite is not provided to the laboratory. This case highlights the importance of appropriate clinical history provision to the microbiology laboratory to help provide important information about potential pathogens and allow microbiologists to optimize culture and identification methods. The introduction of tools such as matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) into clinical laboratories allows identification and the interpretation of results to be performed within a few minutes of isolation on proper culture media, as opposed to traditional methods, whose slowness may be problematic, as shown in this case report.

Isolation of clinically significant microorganisms from prosthetic joint tissue using BacT/ALERT paediatric blood culture bottles compared with solid culture media and enrichment broth.

The diagnosis of prosthetic joint infections and isolation of causative microorganisms has been found to be challenging in microbiology laboratories due to low sensitivity of microbiological culture. The aim of this study was to compare the use of conventional culture methods with the use of both enrichment broth and BacT/ALERT paediatric blood culture bottles, for the diagnosis of prosthetic joint infections. A total of 121 specimens from 44 patients were processed using three methods of microbiological culture: solid media, enrichment broth and paediatric bottles. The paediatric bottle method had a significantly lower (p<0.0001) time to detection than the standard solid media method, and was significantly more sensitive than solid media when used independently (93.33%, CI 83.27-98.09, vs 60.00%, CI 45.43-73.33). The combination use of solid media with paediatric bottles was found to be superior to the conventional solid media method and combination use with enrichment broth.