Interstitial pulmonary inflammation due to Microbacterium sp. after heart transplantation

1 Dipartimento di Igiene e Microbiologia ‘G. D'Alessandro’, Università di Palermo, I-90127 Palermo, Italy 2 Dipartimento ‘G. F. Ingrassia’ Igiene e Sanità Pubblica, Università di Catania, I-95100 Catania, Italy 3 Unité Biodiversité Bactéries Pathogènes Emergentes, Institut Pasteur, F-75724 Paris, France Servizio di Patologia Clinica, Sezione di Batteriologia 4 , and Divisione di Cardiochirurgia 5 , Azienda Ospedali Vittorio Emanuele, Ferrarotto, Santo Bambino, I-95100 Catania, Italy Correspondence Giovanni M. Giammanco g.m.giammanco{at}unipa.it Received 30 June 2005 Accepted 26 October 2005 A coryneform bacterium was isolated from the bronchoalveolar aspirate of a patient with interstitial pulmonary inflammation. Commercial systems identified the isolate as Corynebacterium sp. or Aureobacterium sp./ Corynebacterium aquaticum , but 16S rRNA gene analysis unequivocally attributed it to the genus Microbacterium . This represents the first documented case of Microbacterium pulmonary infection. The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of the OVE isolate reported in this paper is AY960683 .