A rare case of neonatal meningoencephalitis from Paenibacillus thiaminolyticus.

Paenibacillus infections can be life threatening and are being reported with increasing incidence. There are only a few case reports of infections and are mainly described in patients who are immunocompromised, injection drug users, or those with prosthetic devices. Due to improved testing and identification, it appears that these infections may not be as rare as once perceived. We present a case of a 16-day-old term neonate who presented with status epilepticus and was found to have Paenibacillus thiaminolyticus meningoencephalitis. The patient was successfully treated with a combination of ampicillin and ceftazidime then meropenem. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of an infant in the United States who survived this serious invasive infection. We also present an option for therapy given the difficulty treating invasive intracranial infections.

Pyelonephritis and Bacteremia from Lactobacillus delbrueckii.

Lactobacilli are normal colonizers of the oropharynx, gastrointestinal tract, and vagina. Infection is rare, but has been reported in individuals with predisposing conditions. Here we describe the case of a woman with pyelonephritis and bacteremia in which Lactobacillus delbrueckii was determined to be the causative agent.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa dihydroorotases: a tale of three pyrCs.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 was shown to contain three pyrC sequences. Two of these genes, designated pyrC (PA3527) and pyrC2 (PA5541), encode polypeptides with dihydroorotase (DHOase) activity, while the third, pyrC' (PA0401), encodes a DHOase-like polypeptide that lacks DHOase activity, but is necessary for the structure and function of ATCase. Both pyrC and pyrC2 were cloned and complemented an Escherichia coli pyrC mutant. In addition, pyrC and pyrC2 were individually inactivated in P. aeruginosa by homologous exchange with a mutated allele of each. The resulting mutant strains were prototrophic. A pyrC, pyrC2 double mutant was also constructed, and this strain had an absolute requirement for pyrimidines. The transcriptional activity of pyrC and pyrC2 was measured using lacZ promoter fusions. While pyrC was found to be constitutively expressed, pyrC2 was expressed only in the pyrC mutant background. An in vitro transcriptional/translational system was used to estimate the size of the pyrC2 gene product. The expressed polypeptide was approximately 47 kDa, which is in keeping with the theoretical molecular mass of 48 kDa, making it the largest prokaryotic DHOase polypeptide identified to date. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a true DHOase mutant in P. aeruginosa and also the first confirmation that pyrC2 encodes a polypeptide with DHOase activity.