A case of a localized testicular abscess due to Nocardia asteroides in a patient on immunosuppressive therapy for a myeloproliferative disorder is reported. Subsequent fatal dissemination of the infection to the prostate, lungs, and liver occurred. This represents the second reported case of nocardiosis of the testis. Extrapulmonary forms of nocardiosis must be recognized so that appropriate tr...

Virulent Nocardia asteroides reduces lysosomal acid phosphatase activity in murine macrophages. A computer-assisted imaging photometry system was used to quantitate lysozyme and nonspecific esterase-neutral protease levels within individual macrophages following ingestion of nocardiae. In contrast to acid phosphatase, lysozyme and esterase-neutral protease activity was either unchanged or incre...

A Western blot (immunoblot) assay is presented for the diagnosis of nocardiosis with a specific immunodominant 54-kilodalton (kDa) antigen purified from a culture filtrate of Nocardia asteroides by immunoaffinity chromatography. The chromatography column was prepared with immunoglobulin G obtained from sera from patients with lepromatous leprosy. Unbound solutes consisted of specific, partially...

The organism responsible for endocarditis of a prosthetic aortic valve was identified as Nocardia asteroides. The patient was treated with intravenous amikacin (250 mg four times a day) and intravenous imipenem (1.5 g four times a day). The valve was replaced under this new antibiotic regimen. This is the first report of survival after prosthetic valve nocardiosis.

We studied five strains of a new Nocardia taxon recently identified among Nocardia brasiliensis strains associated with invasive diseases (R. J. Wallace, Jr., B. A. Brown, Z. Blacklock, R. Ulrich, K. Jost, J. M. Brown, M. M. McNeil, G. Onyi, V. A. Steingrube, and J. Gibson, J. Clin. Microbiol. 33:1528-1533, 1995) to determine their taxonomic status. Several characteristics of these organisms, i...

Studies on the susceptibility of pathogenic Nocardia to macrolide antibiotics, chalcomycin and tylosin, showed that most of the Nocardia species examined were highly resistant to both antibiotics, although N. nova was moderately susceptible. N. asteroides IFM 0339 converted these macrolides into inactive metabolites by glycosylation at 2'-OH or glycosylation and reduction of the 20-formyl group...

Keratitis due to Nocardia farcinica occurred in a 49-year-old female after inappropriate cleaning of her semipermeable rigid contact lenses with basin-stored water during a holiday in France. N. farcinica was differentiated from Nocardia asteroides by its growth at 45 degrees C, acid production from rhamnose, its opacification of Middlebrook 7H10 agar, and its marked degree of resistance to all...

The production and characterization of five monoclonal antibodies to Mycobacterium tuberculosis are described. Specificity of the monoclonal antibodies was tested against other mycobacterial species by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and immunoblots. HGT 3a, an immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibody, recognizes a molecule of 38,000 molecular weight present only in the tuberculosis complex of M. t...

Of 1,510 sputum samples examined from 1,016 patients with bronchopulmonary disorders, Nocardia asteroides was isolated from 67 samples by paraffin baiting, as compared with only 30 isolations by the conventional technique of culturing on Sabouraud dextrose agar. This higher efficacy of the paraffin bait technique was found to be statistically significant (P less than 0.001).