Ann Lab Med.  2013 Mar;33(2):136-140. 10.3343/alm.2013.33.2.136.

Isolation and Identification of Geosmithia argillacea from a Fungal Ball in the Lung of a Tuberculosis Patient

• Sohn JY
• Jang MA
• Lee JH
• Park KS
• Ki CS
• Lee NY

• KMID: 1781314
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3343/alm.2013.33.2.136

Abstract

Geosmithia argillacea, an anamorph of Talaromyces eburneus, is a thermophilic filamentous fungus that has a phenotype similar to that of the Penicillium species, except for the creamy-white colonies and cylindrical conidia. Recently, a new genus called Rasamsonia has been proposed, which is to accommodate the Talaromyces and Geosmithia species. Here, we report the first Korean case of G. argillacea isolated from a patient with a fungal ball. The patient was a 44-yr-old Korean man with a history of pulmonary tuberculosis and aspergilloma. The newly developed fungal ball in his lung was removed and cultured to identify the fungus. The fungal colonies were white and slow-growing, and the filaments resembled those of Penicillium. Molecular identification was carried out by sequencing the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the 28S rDNA and the beta-tubulin genes. A comparative sequence analysis using the GenBank (http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) database was performed with the basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) algorithm. The results revealed a 97-100% similarity with the G. argillacea ITS sequence. This case should increase awareness among physicians about the pathogenic potential of G. argillacea in humans and help them accurately identify this fungus, because it can be easily confused with Penicillium and Paecilomyces species owing to their similar phenotypic and microscopic characteristics. A molecular approach should be employed to enable accurate identification of G. argillacea.

Keyword

Geosmithia argillacea; Talaromyces eburneus; Rasamsonia argillacea; Penicillium; Paecilomyces; Pulmonary aspergillosis; Tuberculosis; Sequencing

MeSH Terms

Adult
Databases, Genetic
Eurotiales/classification/*isolation & purification
Humans
Lung/microbiology/radiography
Male
Phylogeny
RNA, Ribosomal, 28S/chemistry/genetics
Sequence Analysis, DNA
Tomography, X-Ray Computed
Tuberculosis/*diagnosis/microbiology/radiography
Tubulin/chemistry/genetics
RNA, Ribosomal, 28S
Tubulin

Figure

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  Fig. 1 High resolution computed tomographic image in April 2011 (arrows: a fungal ball).

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  Fig. 2 Colony morphology of the isolate. (A) Surface is creamy white. (B) Reverse is off-white or brown.

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  Fig. 3 Microscopic morphology of Geosmithia argillacea (lactophenol cotton blue stain; left ×400, right ×1,000).

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  Fig. 4 Unrooted neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree based on internal transcribed spacer region sequence of Geosmithia argillacea and morpholosically similar organisms (The scale bar represents 5 nucleotides substitution per 1,000 nucleotides).

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