Mycobacterium szulgai Isolated from a Patient, a Tropical Fish and Aquarium Water

Excerpt

Mycobacterium szulgai is rare in nature and humans. To date, the organism has been isolated from a snail and a tropical fish [1] and it accounts for less than 1% of all human isolates of nontuberculous mycobacteria. When present, however, it is mostly considered as a true pathogen. Since the organism was first described in 1972 [7], sporadic cases of infection have been reported regularly. Mycobacterium szulgai infection typically causes chronic lung disease, but it may present a variety of clinical manifestations such as bursitis, keratitis, synovitis, osteomyelitis and systemic infections in immunocompromised patients [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. We report here the case of a patient with pulmonary disease due to Mycobacterium szulgai and the results of our epidemiological investigation aimed at identifying the source of the microorganism. …