Elsevier

Anaerobe

Volume 47, October 2017, Pages 183-184
Anaerobe

Case report
Breast abscess due to Finegoldia magna in a non-puerperal women

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anaerobe.2017.06.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • F. magna is an uncommon cause of non-puerperal breast abscess.

  • F. magna is especially associated with soft tissue and bone/joint infections.

  • The use of mass spectrometry may help in the diagnosis of anaerobes.

  • Treatment failure due to clindamycin resistant F. magna is described.

Abstract

Finegoldia magna is a Gram-positive anaerobic coccus involved in a wide variety of infections. We report a unusual case of breast abscess in a non-puerperal patient. A 46-year-old woman presented with pain and a nodular lesion in the left breast. Culture of abscess drainage resulted in isolation of F. magna. Initial treatment with clindamycin was changed to a definitive treatment with amoxicillin-clavulanate for 10 days due to resistance to clindamycin, and improvement of this infection was documented.

Introduction

Finegoldia magna (formerly Peptostreptococcus maguns) was firstly described as Diplococcus magnus in 1933 [1] and reclassified in the current genus in 1999 by Murdoch and Shah [2]. This microorganism is the most common species of Gram-positive anaerobic cocci (GPAC) isolated in human clinical specimens mainly within polymicrobial infections, and they are especially associated with soft tissue and bone/joint infections [3]. Moreover, several case reports causing a wide variety of infections have been published after isolation in pure culture [4], [5], [6], [7].

We have recently diagnosed an uncommon case of breast abscess caused by F. magna in a non-puerperal patient. To our knowledge, only two cases have been previously described in the medical literature [8], [9], however, our case was caused by clindamycin resistant strain of F. magna and was responsible for the treatment failure of clindamycin oral therapy.

Section snippets

Case report

A 46-year-old women came to the Gynaecology Emergency Department in February 2016 due to four days history of pain and a nodular lesion in the left breast. Her clinical history was unremarkable except for a fibrocystic mastopathy for over 10 years. In the physical examination the presence of a fluctuating abscessed mass in the left breast was observed. The patient was in treatment with clindamycin orally (450 mg/8 h) and analgesics for 4 days, prescribed by his primary care doctor. The patient

Discussion

F. magna is probably both the most common and the most pathogenic GPAC found in human clinical specimens [3], being the species most frequently isolated in pure culture from a wide variety of clinical samples [4], [5], [6], [7]. This microorganism is part of the normal biota specially of the skin, gastrointestinal and female genitourinary tracts and less frequently of the oral cavity [12].

Several studies have currently involved the anaerobic bacteria in the aetiology of the non-puerperal breast

Conflict of interest

Authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding

None.

References (19)

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Cited by (6)

  • “Breast abscess in a male patient due to Finegoldia magna and Bifidobacterium scardovii: An unusual entity”

    2022, Anaerobe
    Citation Excerpt :

    It is the most pathogenic anaerobic organism which is known to cause diverse clinical infections and is often isolated in pure cultures from clinical specimens. There are former reports of F. magna being isolated from non-puerperal breast abscesses in females [3,9,10]. Gram stain showing Gram-positive cocci arranged in pairs and mostly in tetrads with a diameter of 0.8–1.6 μm could help in presumptive identification of F. magna in clinical specimens [10,11].

  • Antimicrobial susceptibility and clinical findings of significant anaerobic bacteria in southern Spain

    2019, Anaerobe
    Citation Excerpt :

    Among GPACs, resistance to penicillin was found for 25% of Peptostreptococcus isolates but for no isolates of Finegoldia, Peptoniphilus, or Parvimonas. High resistance rates to clindamycin were found for F. magna (54%) and Peptoniphilus spp. (38%) [11]. High resistance to metronidazole was found for two strains of F. magna (MIC > 256 μg/mL) and one isolate of P. harei (MIC 6 μg/mL) [12].

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