CDC group HB-5 as a cause of genitourinary infections in adults

Isolates from five patients with genitourinary infections diagnosed over a 7-week period were identified as CDC group HB-5. The organisms caused clinical presentations of pelvic inflammatory disease in three women and urethritis in the only male in the series. The remaining patient received surgical treatment for a Bartholin gland abscess. Since the clinical and temporal presentations were remarkable and the questions of sexual mode of transmission and strain relatedness were of concern, the five strains were examined further by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis and ribosomal DNA typing. Overall, the five clinical isolates were more closely related to each other than to the control strains. This is the first report describing genitourinary infections caused by group HB-5. While the pathophysiology of group HB-5 infections remains to be fully elucidated, the possibility that this organism may be sexually transmitted deserves further study.