Diagnosis of Coxiella burnetii infection via metagenomic next-generation sequencing: a case report

BACKGROUND: Coxiella burnetii, the etiologic agent of Q fever, is mainly responsible for endocardite. But there are only a few cases of Coxiella burnetii-caused wound infection have been published, because the pathogen is very difficult to isolate using conventional culture methods. CASE PRESENTATIONS: A 76-year-old man, underwent endovascular repair of ruptured left iliac aneurysm plus abdominal aortic aneurysm under general anesthesia in 2018. Left iliac fossa mass resection was performed in 2020. After operation, the wound in the left iliac fossa was repeatedly ruptured and not healing. We used the wound tissue to perform the Metagenomics next-generation sequencing (mNGS), Coxiella burnetii was detected. Sanger sequencing and serologic verification of Coxiella burnetii all showed positive results. CONCLUSIONS: This study proved that mNGS was an effective method to detect clinically unexplained infections, and showed the ability of pathogen identification with high sensitivity and accuracy. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12879-022-07309-2.