Myroides and Neurology: An Overview

Sir,

We read the article, “Myroides odoratus central nervous infection in a postneurosurgery patient” on the esteemed “Indian Journal of Medical and Paediatric Oncology” with great interest. Bhat et al. reported a case of meningitis secondary to M. odoratus followed by supratentorial craniotomy due to a recurrent right frontal malignant brain tumor that arises from astrocytes.[1]

M. odoratus and Myroides odoratimimus are two important species of the Flavobacteriales order that cause infections in humans.[2] In this context, pericardial effusion, pericarditis, pneumonia, soft tissue infection, septic shock, and urinary tract infection were already associated with these microorganisms. However, neurological infections were rarely reported in literature.[3]

Here, we would like to provide a comparison between the two causes already published in the literature [Table 1].[1],[4] An interesting fact to be highlighted is that even though Myroides species infections are one of more resistant organisms in literature, in majority of the reports the individuals had full recovery.[3]

Table 1

Case reports of patients with neurological infections by Myroides species

References	Macfarlane et al	Bhat et al
API – Analytical profile index
Year, country	1985, Jamaica	2019, India
Age/sex	6 weeks/male	37 years/female
Comorbidities	Prematurity	Anaplastic astrocytoma in the right frontal lobe
Central nervous system infection	Meningitis (hydrocephalus and ventriculitis)	Meningitis following supratentorial craniotomy
Microorganism identified	Not clearly specified. It is described as Flavobacterium odoratum	Myroides odoratus
Performing tests for organism identification	Standard biochemical tests and API 2oE	VITEK (BioMerieux, Marcyl’Etoile, France) automated identification system and desferrioxamine (250 pgdisc) susceptibility testing
Management	First intravenous with penicillin and gentamicin. After no improvement, intraventricular cefotaxime was started	Vancomycin and cefoperazone-sulbactam. After susceptibility results, vancomycin was withdrawn
Follow-up	Full recovery	Full recovery of the infection

A recent article by Hu et al. revealed that the comparative analysis of some Myroides strains is phylogenetically related with similar genomes. Furthermore, their study showed that clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats were found in two of the organisms. Thus, these results substantially contribute to a better understanding of the bacterial pathogenicity and antibiotic resistance mechanisms of this genus.[5]

Publikationsverlauf

Eingereicht: 27. Oktober 2019

Angenommen: 06. Januar 2020

Artikel online veröffentlicht:
28. Juni 2021

• References

• 1 Bhat VG, Vira HJ, Shetty P, Gupta S. Myroides odoratus central nervous infection in a postneurosurgery patient. Indian J Med Paediatr Oncol 2019; 40: 291-3
• 2 Vancanneyt M, Segers P, Torck U, Hoste B, Bernardet JF, Vandamme P. et al. Reclassification of Flavobacterium odoratum (Stutzer 1929) strains to a new genus, Myroides, as Myroides odoratus comb. nov. and Myroides odoratimimus sp. nov.. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 1996; 46: 926-32
• 3 Benedetti P, Rassu M, Pavan G, Sefton A, Pellizzer G. Septic shock, pneumonia, and soft tissue infection due to Myroides odoratimimus: Report of a case and review of Myroides infections. Infection 2011; 39: 161-5
• 4 Macfarlane DE, Baum-Thureen P, Crandon I. Flavobacterium odoratum ventriculitis treated with intraventricular cefotaxime. J Infect 1985; 11: 233-8
• 5 Hu S, Cao L, Wu Y, Zhou Y, Jiang T, Wang L, Sarin YK. et al. Comparative genomic analysis of Myroides odoratimimus isolates. Microbiologyopen 2019; 8: e00634