Severe pneumonia caused by Parvimonas micra: a case report

Abstract

Background Parvimonas micra (P. micra) is a gram-positive anaerobic coccus that is detected widely on the skin, in the oral mucosa and in the gastrointestinal tract. In certain circumstances, P. micra can cause abdominal abscesses, bacteraemia and other infections. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no case reports describing the biological characteristics of P. micra-related pneumonia. These bacteria do not always multiply in an aerobic organ, such as the lung, and they could be easily overlooked because of the clinical mindset. Case presentation A 35-year-old pregnant woman was admitted to the emergency department 4 weeks prior to her due date who was exhibiting 5 points on the Glasgow coma scale. A computed tomography (CT) scan showed a massive haemorrhage in her left basal ganglia. She underwent a caesarean section and brain surgery before being admitted to the ICU. She soon developed severe pneumonia and hypoxemia. Given that multiple sputum cultures were negative, the patient’s bronchoalveolar lavage fluid was submitted for next-generation sequencing (NGS) to determine the pathogen responsible for the pneumonia; as a result, P. micra was determined to be the causative pathogen. Accordingly the antibiotic therapy was altered and the pneumonia improved. Conclusion In this case, we demonstrated severe pneumonia caused by the anaerobic organism P. micra, and the patient benefited from receiving the correct antibiotic. NGS was used as a method of quick diagnosis when sputum culture failed to distinguish the pathogen.

Dacryocystitis Involving Parvimonas micra and Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron Infection

“…[5][6][7] These reported findings were expected, given the organism is a normal part of gastrointestinal, oral, genital, and potentially skin flora. 2,8 Staphylococcus lugdunensis and Staphylococcus epidermidis, the aerobic infecting agents present in our patient's tear duct culture, are also components of normal skin flora and commonly implicated in nasolacrimal duct infections. 9,10 Because S. lugdunensis, S. epidermidis, and P. micra are components of skin flora, it would be logical to assume skin flora may have entered the tear ducts.…”

Parvimonas micra activates the Ras/ERK/c-Fos pathway by upregulating miR-218-5p to promote colorectal cancer progression

“…P. micra is an oral opportunistic pathogen that is closely related to periodontitis and other diseases; moreover, it can cause purulent infections of systemic organs [ 30 , 31 ]. Bioinformatics analysis showed that the abundance of P. micra in patients with CRC was significantly higher than that in healthy people [ 32 , 33 ].…”

A case report of sepsis and death caused by Parvimonas micra, a rare anaerobe

“…Although both piperacillin–tazobactam and imipenem have some pharmacological effect on anaerobic bacteria, they were very ineffective in treating our patient's infection, and it is presumed that she may have also had a combination of other pathogenic infections. In a report by Yu et al, ( 9 ) a patient was treated with piperacillin–tazobactam and meropenem after lung infection with P. micra , but the initial outcome was unsatisfactory. The infection was finally treated with ornidazole after the pathogenic organism was identified by next-generation sequencing (NGS), and the lung infection was rapidly controlled.…”

“…In some reports of infections with P. micra , the final diagnosis is made by reference to the NGS results ( 9 ). NGS is the process of randomly fragmenting and splicing DNA, preparing sequencing libraries, and ultimately obtaining sequence information by performing extension reactions on the tens of thousands of clones in the library and detecting the corresponding signals (the core principle is sequencing while synthesizing).…”