Sneathia amnii bacteraemia and chorioamnionitis leading to second trimester abortion: a case report

BACKGROUND: Sneathia amnii (formerly designated as Leptotrichia amnionii ) was first described in 2002 in the USA. Members of the genus Sneathia can be part of the normal flora of the genitourinary tract, but have been implicated in invasive (mostly gynaecological) infections. CASE PRESENTATION: To the best of our knowledge, here we present the first case of S. amnii infection in Belgium, in a young woman presenting with fever leading to second trimester septic abortion. CONCLUSION: Despite its pathogenicity, S. amnii remains an underrated cause of infections due to inherent difficulties with conventional laboratory methods. By extracting the bacterial DNA directly from the blood culture broth and performing a 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequence analysis we succeeded in identifying S. amnii as the most probable cause of the septic abortion in our patient.