Otomastoiditis Caused by Mycobacterium abscessus, the Netherlands

摘要

To the Editor: Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are increasingly recognized as human pathogens (1). Otomastoiditis is a rare extrapulmo-nary NTM disease type fi rst described in 1976; Mycobacterium chelonae–M. abscessus group bacteria, which are rapidly growing NTM, are the most frequent causative agents and the dis-ease mostly affects children (1–3). In the Netherlands, M. chelonae–M. abscessus group isolates have been reported from the otologic samples of an average of 2 patients annually since 2006, as compared to 6 patients in the preceding 10 years. This emergence is not a likely result of improved laboratory facilities or awareness in clinicians because liquid culture and molecular identifi cation techniques predate the rise in notifi cation and Dutch guidelines advise against per-forming cultures for chronic otorrhea.We identifi ed 10 patients from the national reference laboratory database with otologic samples yielding M. chelonae–M. abscessus group bacteria during January 1995–June 2007. We resubjected these isolates to molecular identifi cation by rpoB gene sequenc-ing (4) and performed a medical fi le review