Nocardia cyriacigeorgica: first case reported in Mexico

Abstract

Nocardia have been reported as opportunistic microorganisms in hospitals; they are aerobic, gram positive, branched and saprophytic microorganisms of the soil. This highly heterogeneous group is associated with infectious diseases of the human skin such as micetoma or nocardiosis, the latter being either pulmonary or cutaneous. Given the large number of new species, traditional molecular biology diagnostic techniques are no longer suitable for the identification of these organisms. Many of these groups are biochemically similar rendering species identification with conventional methods uncertain. This paper describes the first case of isolation of Nocardia cyriacigeorgica reported in Mexico. The strain was obtained from a lung pneumonia infection biopsy on a 2-year old child in the Children's Hospital of Mexico, “Federico Gómez”. The characterization of this strain was performed using the molecular technique 16S rRNA gene analysis. The isolated strain was identified as N. cyriacigeorgica with 98% of nucleotide homology.