Campylobacter fetus meningitis confirmed by a 16S rRNA gene analysis using the MinION nanopore sequencer, South Korea, 2016

C. fetus should be considered a possible cause of bacterial meningitis, especially in immunocompromised patients with accompanying gastrointestinal symptoms. Nanopore sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene allowed the identification of C. fetus at the subspecies level. The capability of differentiating bacterial subspecies makes MinION extremely useful in the epidemiology and surveillance of bacterial infections; however, it should be verified for diverse bacteria obtained from clinical samples in the near future. Nevertheless, the nanopore sequencer would be very useful for pathogen detection in patients with bacterial infections because it enables full-length 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and the real-time analysis of the reads.

Authors: Jangsup Moon, Narae Kim, Han Sang Lee, Hye-Rim Shin, Soon-Tae Lee, Keun-Hwa Jung, Kyung-Il Park, Sang Kun Lee, Kon Chu