Bacteremia and sepsis by Arcanobacterium haemolyticum in a young immunocompetent patient

Abstract

We report the case of a twenty-year-old immunocompetent male patient presentingto the emergency room with pharyngitis and fever. Blood cultures were drawn and Arcanobac-terium haemolyticum (rough biotype) was recovered. The presence of the arcanolysin gene wasinvestigated at the molecular level and the upstream region was amplified and sequenced inorder to correlate it with the smooth or rough biotype. Although the isolate was susceptible topenicillin, vancomycin and gentamicin, empirical treatments first with amoxicillin/clavulanicacid (1 g/12 h) and then with ceftriaxone (1 g/12 h) failed and the infection evolved to sep-sis. Finally, treatment with vancomycin (1 g/12 h) plus piperacillin/tazobactam (4.5 g/8 h) waseffective. Lemierre?s syndrome was ruled out. To the best of our knowledge, this is the firstcase of bacteremia by A. haemolyticum reported in Argentina.