infected SEMEN, help needed!

[Diane Stothard]

In article <35vhcq$469 at newsbf01.news.aol.com>,
BCapstone <bcapstone at aol.com> wrote:
>THIS IS A MYSTERY!  The patient is SICK and any help will be appreciated.
>I have a patient who became septic with Enterobacter Cloacae(5 of 6 blood
>cultures positive) after a bout of acute prostatitis.  Several cultures of
>Expressed Prostatic Secretions prior this episode were negative.  SEMEN
>cultures have been postive for Staph Haemolyticus, Staph Epidermidis, a
>second strain of Staph Epidermidis, or have been negative.  Light
>microscopy of EPS showed 60 wbc's per high powered field(unfortunately
>slide was not saved or stained for bacteria).  Microscopy of SEMEN shows
>normal sperm, 5 to 10 wbc's per hpf, numerous cocci, and A few rods(seems
>to be two kinds.)  (Oddly semen does not seem to gram stain well, and I am
>still unsure if the rods are gram positives or negatives.)  WHY DON'T
>THESE RODS GROW IN CULTURE?  WHAT CAN BE DONE TO IDENTIFY THEM OR VERIFY
>THAT ONE IS Enterobacter Cloacae?  There does not appear to be any other
>source for the sepsis but the prostate.  HELP!  I will watch this board
>for posts and will be happy to receive E-mail.
>Thank you.
>BCapstone at aol.com

Get ahold of some prokaryotic 16S rRNA primers and so some PCR on your sample. 
You will have to clone your products and sequence them individually since it 
appears that you have several microbes. After that, you can BLAST your sequence
to GenBank and receive a list of the closest relatives to your critters. If 
you're lucky, you may not have uncovered something completely new and it will 
already be in GenBank. Or, if you're lucky, you will have uncovered something 
new and get famous. Depends on how you look at it! You can PCR from your semen
sample, the fresher the better. The protocols would be similar to PCRing from 
whole blood. Good luck!

Diane