Genetic Testing Technology Assisting in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Suppurative Arthritis and Extensive Migratory Skin and Soft Tissue Infections Caused by Disseminated Staphylococcus aureus Disease: A Case Report and Review

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) infection is readily disseminated, yet the multiple septic arthritis and extensive migratory skin and soft tissue infections it causes are uncommon and challenging to treat. The infection can be life-threatening, with a mortality rate of 15-31%. Early, targeted antibiotic therapy is critical to improve prognosis. However, routine cultures are time-consuming and have low positivity rates, which may lead to errors in antibiotic regimen selection, depriving patients of optimal treatment. Genetic testing technologies, such as macrogenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) and digital polymerase chain reaction (dPCR), are now emerging as powerful tools for early pathogen diagnosis as well as pathogen diagnosis of target detectors with low microbial loads. In this study, we report a 53-year-old man who was admitted to the ICU for treatment of septic shock. The causative agent was targeted earlier as S. aureus by mNGS, and the shock was corrected more quickly with targeted antibiotic medication. However, he later developed multiple septic arthritis and an extensive migratory skin soft tissue infection with persistent fever, and at one point a gram-negative bacterial infection was suspected, and the antibiotic regimen was incorrectly changed. Blood dPCR suggested that the causative organism was still methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA), with no drug resistance gene detected, and the anti-infective regimen was readjusted, and the patient eventually recovered and was discharged from the hospital. We present this rare case and review related studies to validate the superiority of genetic testing technology in pathogen diagnosis, which deserves further application.