%0 Journal Article
%T Native valve endocarditis due to Micrococcus luteus: a case report and review of the literature
%A George Miltiadous
%A Moses Elisaf
%J Journal of Medical Case Reports
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1752-1947-5-251
%X A 74-year-old Greek-Cypriot woman was admitted to our Internal Medicine Clinic due to fever and malaise and the diagnosis of aortic valve M luteus endocarditis was made. She was immunosuppressed due to methotrexate and steroid treatment. Our patient was unsuccessfully treated with vancomycin, gentamicin and rifampicin for four weeks. The aortic valve was replaced and she was discharged in good condition.Prosthetic infective endocarditis due to M luteus is rare. To the best of our knowledge, we report the first case in the literature involving a native valve.Micrococcus species are Gram-positive cocci that are normal inhabitants of human skin that rarely cause infectious diseases such as septic arthritis, meningitis and prosthetic valve endocarditis [1-3]. In a Medline database search of the literature the authors identified 17 previous cases of infective endocarditis due to Micrococcus species, all involving prosthetic valves. This particular case is of particular interest in that it is a case of infective native aortic valve endocarditis due to Micrococcus luteus. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such case to be reported [4,5].A 74-year-old Greek-Cypriot woman was admitted to our Internal Medicine Clinic because of fever and malaise that had started a week previously. At three weeks prior to her admission she had undergone a total right knee replacement due to chronic osteoarthritis. Also, 10 years earlier our patient had undergone total mastectomy of the right breast and axillary lymph node dissection, due to breast cancer. Since then she had been taking tamoxifen. Additionally, seven years ago a giant cell arteritis had been diagnosed and she had been taking 15 mg of methotrexate per day and pulses of steroids. She had no recent history of dental work.On admission, our patient was febrile (38.5ˇăC) and tachycardic (112 beats/minute). The chest was clear to auscultation and a diastolic grade 3/6 murmur along the right sternal border was detected on c
%U http://www.jmedicalcasereports.com/content/5/1/251