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Case Reports
. 2021 Oct 24;21(1):1097.
doi: 10.1186/s12879-021-06784-3.

A rare case of severe gastroenteritis caused by Aeromonas hydrophila after colectomy in a patient with anti-Hu syndrome: a case report

Michael Greiner  1 , Alexia Anagnostopoulos  2 , Daniel Pohl  3 , Reinhard Zbinden  1 , Andrea Zbinden  4
Affiliations
Case Reports

A rare case of severe gastroenteritis caused by Aeromonas hydrophila after colectomy in a patient with anti-Hu syndrome: a case report

Michael Greiner et al. BMC Infect Dis. .

Abstract

Background: Aeromonas hydrophila is a gram-negative facultative anaerobic coccobacillus, which is an environmental opportunistic pathogen. A. hydrophila are involved in several infectious diseases such as gastroenteritis, septicemia and wound infections. However, gastroenteritis caused by Aeromonas spp. are rare and the clinical relevance of Aeromonas species in stool specimens is still under debate.

Case presentation: Our case concerns a 32-year-old woman who presented at hospital with a worsening watery diarrhea and fever requiring intensive care. A cholera-like illness was diagnosed. The patient had a past history of an anti-Hu syndrome with a myenteric ganglionitis. A molecular multiplex RT-PCR (QIAstat-Dx Gastrointestinal Panel, QIAGEN) covering a broad spectrum of diverse gastrointestinal pathogens performed directly from the stool was negative but the stool culture revealed growth of A. hydrophila. Further investigations of the A. hydrophila strain in cell cultures revealed the presence of a cytotoxic enterotoxin.

Conclusions: Although A. hydrophila rarely causes gastroenteritis, Aeromonas spp. should be considered as a causative agent of severe gastroenteritis with a cholera-like presentation. This case highlights the need to perform culture methods from stool samples when PCR-based methods are negative and gastrointestinal infection is suspected.

Keywords: Aeromononas hydrophila; Anti-Hu syndrome; Case report; Cytotoxic enterotoxin; Gastroenteritis.

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Conflict of interest statement

There are no conflicts of interest to declare.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Cytotoxic effects of A. hydrophila cultured supernatant in Vero cells A negative control with culture media, B cytotoxic damage of A. hydrophila after 1 day incubation exhibiting cell rounding C cytotoxic damage of A. hydrophila after 4 days incubation, indicating cellular vacuolation and monolayer destruction
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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