<i>Chromobacterium haemolyticum</i> Pneumonia Associated with Near-Drowning and River Water, Japan
Hajime Kanamori, Tetsuji Aoyagi, Makoto Kuroda, Tsuyoshi Sekizuka, Makoto Katsumi, Kenichiro Ishikawa, Tatsuhiko Hosaka, Hiroaki Baba, Kengo Oshima, Koichi Tokuda, Masatsugu Hasegawa, Yu Kawazoe, Shigeki Kushimoto, Mitsuo Kaku
Abstract
C hromobacterium is a genus of gram-negative, fac- ultative anaerobic bacteria; application of 16S rRNA gene sequencing into bacterial taxonomy is expanding its species (1-5). Most Chromobacterium infections in humans have been caused by C. violaceum (6). Recently, exceptionally rare cases of C. haemolyticum infections have been described (2,4,7-9), but environmental sources of this pathogen have not been well investigated. We describe a case of Chromobacterium-associated pneumonia due to near-drowning and environmental investigation of a river site of the near-drowning. We used whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to identify the Chromobacterium species causing pneumonia associated with near-drowning and investigate molecular features, including antimicrobial resistance, virulence, and genetic relatedness of clinical and environmental isolates of C. haemolyticum.