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Overview
- Common inhabitants of skin and mucous membranes of animals
- Opportunistic infections
- Cause pyogenic infections
- Most species host specific
Characteristics
- Small, tough, Gram positive rods
- Pleomorphic
- Cluster together to resemble Chinese characters - coryneform morphology
- Known as diphtheroids
- Catalase positive, oxidase negative
- Facultative anaerobes
- Require enriched media for growth
- Non-motile
Pathogenesis and pathogenicity
- Pyogenic causing suppurative infections except for C. bovis
- C. pseudotuberculosis:
- Facultative intracellular pathogen inside macrophages
- Cell wall lipid
- Produces a phospholipase toxin which hydolyses sphingomyelin in mammalian cell membranes
- Phospholipase may enhance survival and multiplication in host in early stages
- C. renale
- Urinary tract pathogens
- Produce urease and hydrolyse urea
- Possess fimbriae for attachment to urogenital mucosa
- Infection when immunity reduced or following tissue damage during parturition
Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis
Corynebacterium renale
Corynebacterium bovis
Diagnosis
- Samples include pus, exudate, affected tissues and urine
- Presence of coryneform organisms in smears
- Culture on blood agar, selective blood agar and MacConkey agar
- Do not grow on MacConkey
- Colony characteristics:
- C. bovis: lipophilic bacterium; small, white, dry, non-haemolytic colonies on plates inoculated with bovine milk
- C. kutscheri: white colonies; occasionally haemolytic
- C. pseudotuberculosis: small, white coloniess surrounded by narrow zone of complete haemolysis; colonies become dry and cream-coloured
- C. renale: small, non-haemolytic colonies after 24 hours; pigment produced after 48 hours
- Biochemical reactions:
- Certain strains of C. pseudotuberculosis reduce nitrates
- All pathogenic strains except C. bovis produce urease
- Enhancement of haemolysis produced by C. pseudotuberculosis when inoculated across a streak of Rhodococcus equi
Pages in category "Corynebacterium species"
The following 5 pages are in this category, out of 5 total.