Granulomatous Mastitis with Corynebacterium Infection

Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis (IGM) is a rare relapsing benign, chronic inflammatory breast disease characterized by infiltration of inflammatory cells including multinucleated giant cells. Recently, it has been suggested that infection with Corynebacterium species (spp.) may be involved in the onset of the disease. Therefore, the aim of this article is to summarize the previous IGM reports related to Corynebacterium spp.

I used the terms "granulomatous mastitis Corynebacterium" in PubMed and "granulomatous mastitis Corynebacterium" with Japanese in Google Scholar, which resulted in 63 English articles and 71 Japanese articles. I read all the abstracts and summarized the recent articles with Corynebacterium in the title.

In 16 English articles and 4 Japanese ones, the most common Corynebacterium spp. was Corynebacterium kroppenstedtii, followed by Corynebacterium tuberculostearium.

Corynebacterium infection is widely detected with IGM. In addition to bacterial culture, real-time polymerase chain reaction and formalin-fixed, paraffinembedded biopsy specimens’ analysis can be used to detect Corynebacterium spp.