Anaerobic bacteraemia caused by "Candidatus Prevotella massiliensis" following medical abortion: a case report.

Anaerobic bacteremia due to Prevotella spp. is uncommon, and "Candidatus Prevotella massiliensis" has rarely been reported from clinical specimens. We describe a case of bacteremia caused by "P. massiliensis" in an 18-year-old woman presenting with fever and abdominal pain following medical abortion and subsequent suction curettage. An anaerobic blood-culture bottle yielded small Gram-negative rods that could not be identified by MALDI-TOF MS using a routine reference database. Near-complete 16S rRNA gene sequencing demonstrated 100% sequence identity to the reference sequence associated with "P. massiliensis," supporting species-level identification. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing showed resistance to clindamycin and susceptibility to metronidazole and penicillin. To our knowledge, this is the first report of "P. massiliensis" bacteremia in the context of medical abortion. This case demonstrates both the pathogenic potential of this rarely reported species and the limitations of routine MALDI-TOF MS identification for recently described or database-limited Prevotella spp., underscoring the value of 16S rRNA gene sequencing when routine methods are inconclusive.