Frequency of Mycobacterium chimaera among Belgian patients, 2015
(2016) Journal of Medical Microbiology — Vol. 65, n° 11, p. 1307-1310 (2016)
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- Abstract
- Mycobacterium chimaera arouses an increasing public health concern, as this non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) has recently been associated with life-threatening cardiac infections. M. chimaera and M. intracellulare are genetically very close, but recently appeared to present different epidemiological and clinical significance. Therefore, it has become important for laboratories to use adequate techniques allowing a precise species identification. To date, most commercially available laboratory assays cannot distinguish them, and erroneously identify M. chimaera as M. intracellulare. We performed a re-analysis of the 149 M. intracellulare strains received by the Belgian National Reference Laboratory using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, representing 25 % of all NTM collected in 2015. We found that M. chimaera represents the majority (n=94, 63 %) of the previously M. intracellulare. This study reports the large presence of M. intracellulare/chimaera among Belgian patients infected by a NTM and the predominance of the species M. chimaera among this group. This study also stresses the public health importance of M. chimaera and demonstrates the inability of commonly-used laboratory techniques to correctly diagnose these infections.
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Soetaert, K., Vluggen, C., André, E., Vanhoof, R., Vanfleteren, B., & Mathys, V. (2016). Frequency of Mycobacterium chimaera among Belgian patients, 2015. Journal of Medical Microbiology, 65(11), 1307-1310. https://doi.org/10.1099/jmm.0.000359 (Original work published 2016)