Case report: First report of Legionella pneumophila and Bordetella bronchiseptica coinfection in an immunocompromised patient

Abstract

Legionnaires' disease (LD) is a serious type of pneumonia, typically contracted by susceptible people through the inhalation of aerosols contaminated with Legionella pneumophila (Lp). In this report, the first case of coinfection with Lp-Bordetella bronchiseptica (Bb) is described. A possible source of the Lp infection may be the hotel in Paris (France) where the patient had stayed before developing the symptoms. The Bb infection may have been transmitted by the dog with which he had constant contact, although this has not been proven.

Keywords: Bordetella bronchiseptica; Legionella pneumophila; cgMLST; coinfection; legionnaires' disease.

Figure 1

Phylogenetic analysis of ST1. (A) cgMLST based on the subset 1,471 cgMLST targets of the 1,521 core gene scheme is shown. Patient's ST1 and the most phylogenetically related strain are highlighted by a red circle. Node colors correspond to the town where strains were isolated, and on the branches the number of different loci is reported. In (B), a maximum likelihood tree of a large number of ST1 genomes, available in GenBank, (in red those isolated in France, in blue those from Italy) is shown. The zoom on the patient's ST1 is highlighted by the arrow.