Bordetella holmesii bacteremia in a renal transplant recipient: emergence of a new pathogen

Abstract

Bordetella holmesii is a gram-negative rod that was initially identified in 1995. It causes bacteremia, pneumonia, and endocarditis mostly in patients with anatomical or functional asplenia. We report here, to the best of our knowledge, the first case of B. holmesii bacteremia in a renal transplant recipient following rituximab therapy for recurrence of membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis.

<i>Bordetella holmesii</i>: Comparison of Two Isolates from Blood and a Respiratory Sample

“… Can B. holmesii be carried asymptomatically? It is recovered from the blood of immunocompromised patients, such as asplenic patients and patients on chemotherapy [19]. It is probably important to obtain a nasopharyngeal swab from all patients with B. holmesii bacteremia.…”

“…This poses a potential problem, because the diagnosis of B. pertussis infection is based on the PCR detection of IS481 sequences. The development of specific PCR diagnosis for B. holmesii infection, targeting the recA gene [7][8][9], or the transposase IS1001bho [10], the amplification of specific target as bhoE [11] or the sequencing of 16sRNA or OmpA [12] has made it possible for a number of retrospective studies to demonstrate an increase in the number of reported cases of respiratory infections due to B. holmesii over the last few years [10,11,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. We wondered whether this increase in detection reflected a real increase in the number of infections or was simply a consequence of the increasing use of RT-PCR targeting IS481 for the diagnosis of B. pertussis since 2005.…”

RecurrentBordetella holmesiiBacteremia and Nasal Carriage in a Patient Receiving Rituximab

“…Since 1999, B. holmesii has been detected during pertussis outbreaks in NPS specimens of patients with pertussis-like signs and symptoms ( 3 – 6 ). To our knowledge, the association between B. holmesii infection and rituximab treatment has been reported only once, in a renal transplant recipient, and B. holmesii nasal carriage was not tested for ( 7 ). …”