Medical Page Today Two U.S. cases of Paenibacillus dendritiformis infection in infants that led to severe meningitis should raise clinicians’ awareness of the rare but potentially lethal emerging threat, researchers said.
The cases involved P. dendritiformis infections in a female infant in Pennsylvania and a male infant in Minnesota, one of whom died. Both infants were born preterm and spent time in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), reported Jessica Ericson, MD, MPH, of Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and colleagues in the Public Health Alerts section of NEJM Evidence, which is published jointly with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.