Isolation of Buttiauxella gaviniae from a spinal cord patient with urinary bladder pathology

A gram-negative Buttiauxella gaviniae-like organism (LBV449) was isolated from a urine sample of a patient suffering from urine bladder pathology and neurological problems. The isolate was positive for adonitol fermentation and L-arginine dihydrolase and negative for melibiose and L-ornithine decarboxylase. The API 20E code was 3004113. Retrospectively, another isolate (ENT107), from a leg wound, was recovered from our collections and was shown to have similar biochemical characteristics. DNA-DNA hybridization showed 77% similarity between both strains, and strain LBV449 revealed 74% DNA-DNA similarity to the type strain of B. gaviniae. Neither 16S rRNA gene sequencing nor fatty acid analysis were useful for identification. The characteristic tRNA-PCR patterns obtained for these two clinical isolates consisted of fragments with lengths of 102.2, 105.4, 116.6, and 136.9 bp and most resembled the tRNA-PCR pattern obtained for B. gaviniae, but they lacked the B. gaviniae fragments of 88.2 and 239.5 bp. To our knowledge, no clinical cases with Buttiauxella strains have been described thus far.