Case Reports in Urology
Volume 2015 (2015), Article ID 490560, 1 page
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/490560

Letter to the Editor

Comment on “Necrotizing Urethritis due to Aerococcus urinae”

Magnus Rasmussen

Division of Infection Medicine, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Tornavägen 10, BMC B14, 221 84 Lund, Sweden

Received 28 July 2015; Accepted 3 August 2015

Academic Editor: Tun-Chieh Chen

Copyright © 2015 Magnus Rasmussen. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

I read with interest the case report of a man with necrotizing urethritis caused by Aerococcus urinae by Babaeer and coworkers [1]. This report clearly describes a novel and serious clinical presentation of an infection claimed to be caused by Aerococcus urinae. Soft tissue infections in the genital area caused by this organism have been described previously [2, 3] but the case described by Babaeer et al. adds important information on a severe course of infection. However, important questions regarding the aetiology in this case remain unanswered.

Species determination of aerococci is a difficult task with many pitfalls [4]. Therefore, it is vital for the reader to know how the identification of A. urinae in the urine culture was made in the present case. Of even greater importance, the reader needs to know if the “Alpha Haemolytic Streptococcus” isolated from tissue and from blood also could represent A. urinae. Without an explanation of the bacteriological investigations of the isolates from this patient, it is hard to determine the bacterial aetiology of the infection described.

Conflict of Interests

The author declares no conflict of interests in this paper.

References

A. A. Babaeer, C. Nader, V. Iacoviello, and K. Tomera, “Necrotizing Urethritis due to Aerococcus urinae,” Case Reports in Urology, vol. 2015, Article ID 136147, 3 pages, 2015.

P. M. H. Schuur, L. Sabbe, A. J. Van Der Wouw, G. J. Montagne, and A. G. M. Buiting, “Three cases of serious infection caused by Aerococcus urinae,” European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 368–371, 1999.

E. Senneby, A. C. Petersson, and M. Rasmussen, “Clinical and microbiological features of bacteraemia with Aerococcus urinae,” Clinical Microbiology and Infection, vol. 18, no. 6, pp. 546–550, 2012.

M. Rasmussen, “Aerococci and aerococcal infections,” Journal of Infection, vol. 66, no. 6, pp. 467–474, 2013.