Clostridium Innocuum, a Potential Emerging Pathogen with Microbiological and Clinical Characteristics

Clostridium innocuum is an anaerobic, gram-positive, spore-forming bacteria discovered in a patient with an appendiceal abscess by Smith and King in 1962. Its name, C. innocuum, reflected its clinically "harmless" nature, as evidenced by its lack of virulence in animal infection models. Since then, C. innocuum has been recognised as a normal component of the intestinal flora as well as the source of a rare, vancomycin-resistant opportunistic illness in immunocompromised people. C. innocuum, in addition to being a known extraintestinal pathogen, may also be a diarrheal pathogen that produces a C. difficile infection-like antibiotic-associated diarrheal sickness, according to findings from Taiwan. However, there are still unanswered questions about C. innocuum's clinical significance. We'll go through the microbiological and clinical aspects in this section.

Author(s): Kent Lewandrowski

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