Bacteremia and sepsis by Arcanobacterium haemolyticum in a young immunocompetent patient

摘要

We report the case of a twenty-year-old immunocompetent male patient presenting to the emergency room with pharyngitis and fever. Blood cultures were drawn andArcanobacterium haemolyticum(rough biotype) was recovered. The presence of the arcanolysin gene was investigated at the molecular level and the upstream region was amplified and sequenced in order to correlate it with the smooth or rough biotype. Although the isolate was susceptible to penicillin, vancomycin and gentamicin, empirical treatments first with amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (1g/12h) and then with ceftriaxone (1g/12h) failed and the infection evolved to sepsis. Finally, treatment with vancomycin (1g/12h) plus piperacillin/tazobactam (4.5g/8h) was effective. Lemierre's syndrome was ruled out. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of bacteremia byA. haemolyticumreported in Argentina.