Shanmugam L, Priyadarshi K, Kumaresan M, Sivaradjy M, Upadhyay P, Elamurugan TP, Sastry AS. A Rare Case Report of Non-toxigenic Corynebacterium diphtheriae Bloodstream Infection in an Uncontrolled Diabetic With Peripheral Vascular Disease.
Cureus 2021;
13:e14947. [PMID:
34123644 PMCID:
PMC8189935 DOI:
10.7759/cureus.14947]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/05/2022] Open
Abstract
Corynebacterium diphtheriae usually causes respiratory diphtheria, which is considered as a disease of toxemia but never bacteremia. Over the last few decades, cutaneous diphtheria has been increasingly reported owing to the emergence of the non-toxigenic strain, which causes locally necrotic and ulcerative lesions. Bacteremia is very rare, but the existing evidence in the literature suggests that the organism can rarely cause invasive infections such as septicemia, endocarditis, and osteoarthritis. Here, we present a rare case of C. diphtheriae causing bloodstream infections in an elderly diabetic with peripheral vascular disease, which was diagnosed incidentally on routine blood culture owing to automated identification systems viz matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) confirmed with conventional methods, and susceptibility was performed using automated VITEK 2 system (BioMérieux, Marcy-l'Étoile, France), which has aided in the timely management.
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