Hardware Infection with Corynebacterium spp.: a Case Report and Review of the Literature

There are over 120 species in the genus Corynebacterium, many of which are generally non-pathogenic. Isolates are frequently recovered from human clinical specimens, but because Corynebacterium spp. are known to be colonizers of human skin and mucosal surfaces, they are often not identified to the species level due to limitations in identification methods and lack of consensus concerning their clinical relevance. In this article, we present a case report demonstrating the difficulty and importance of distinguishing different strains of Corynebacterium isolated from a patient with a post-operative spine infection and review the current literature. This case illustrates not only the role of molecular diagnostics in determining the etiology of infection, but also the diagnostic subtleties that remain for the clinical microbiologist and infectious disease practitioner regarding the genus Corynebacterium.