Report of unusual clinical appearance in bacteraemia with nonhaemolytic M-type 58 Streptococcus pyogenes.

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES: The occurrence of haemolytic colonies on blood agar often provides the starting point for the laboratory diagnosis of pyogenic streptococci, while non-haemolytic variants could pass unrecognised, leading to a failure of diagnosis. We report the details of two epidemiologically unrelated patients with bacteraemia featuring M-type 58 Streptococcus pyogenes, a seemingly rare cause of human infection in the UK, and briefly review previous reports of infection with non-haemolytic strains of this species.

METHODS

Case notes of the two patients were reviewed. Isolates obtained from clinical specimens were recovered and identified and cultured on horse blood agar to observe pattern of haemolysis.

RESULTS

In the first case, of a 75 year-old man with leukaemia and a retropharyngeal abscess, the isolate was consistently non-haemolytic, probably due to a failure to produce streptolysin S as has been described before in a small number of reports involving various M-types. In the second case, of an 84 year-old woman with dermatitis and septicaemia, the organism was principally beta-haemolytic but with no haemolysis on aerobic culture where the colonies were well spaced, a phenomenon thought to be associated with abundant production of serum opacity factor (OF).

INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION: These cases are a reminder that misleading cultural appearances can occur with S. pyogenes and that OF positive strains can produce poor haemolysis on aerobic culture, or fail even to do so at all.