Ignatzschineria larvae Bacteremia Following Lucilia sp. Myiasis in an Irregular Migrant: A Case Report

Abstract

Bacteremia induced by wound myiasis is uncommon and therefore rarely suspected by clinicians when treating patients with neglected wounds. We present a case of Ignatzschineria larvae bacteremia as a complication of Lucilia sp. maggot wound myiasis in a young male migrant. This is the first reported human case of Ignatzschineria bacteremia in Slovenia and one of the 2 described in the literature where the fly larvae infesting the wounds of the patient with Ignatzschineria bacteremia were not only suspected to be Lucilia sp. but also entomologically identified.

Keywords: Ignatzschineria larvae; Lucilia sp.; bacteremia; migrant; myiasis.

Fig. 1

Lucilia sp. 3rd instar larva from our patient. (A) Thoracic segment spines. (B) Posterior spiracles with 3 distinct straight slits surrounded by a complete closed peritremal ring with one internal projection between the outer and middle slits; the spines and the posterior spiracles were photographed using a Nikon Eclipse E600 (Nikon, Tokyo, Japan) microscope and DS-Fi1 (Nikon) camera. (C) Posterior spiracles located on the face of the terminal segment.

Fig. 2

Ignatzschineria larvae from pure bacterial culture: Gram stain.

Fig. 3

Culture of Ignatzschineria larvae grown on (A) Columbia agar and (B) chocolate agar after 18-hour incubation.

Fig. 4

Neighbour-Joining phylogenetic tree based on nearly full-length 16S rRNA gene sequence of Ignatzschineria larvae isolate BM1043 from our patient (in boldface) and representative Ignatzschineria sp. sequences retrieved from GenBank. The tree was created with MEGA 7.0 software using the Neighbour-Joining method and Jukes–Cantor model. Values on branches are percentage bootstrap values using 1,000 replicates. Wohlfahrtiimonas chitiniclastica was included as an outgroup organism.