Table I.

Characteristics and clinical data of patients with listeriosis

Characteristic	Case-patient
	1	2	3	4	5	6
Gender	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male
Age (years)	86	74	62	67	92	90
Underlying condition	Lymphoma	Liver cirrhosis (Child's class C)	Lymphoma	Liver cirrhosis (Child's class B)	Cardiac disease	Cardiac disease
Reason for admission	Febrile neutropenia	Liver failure and gastrointestinal bleeding	Intestinal obstruction	Liver failure	Heart failure and pneumonia	Heart failure
Ward of admission	Hematology	Internal medicine	Hematology	Internal medicine	Internal medicine	Internal medicine
Type of listeriosis	Primary bacteremia	Primary peritonitis	Secundary bacteremia	Primary peritonitis	Secondary bacteremia	Secondary bacteremia
Symptoms	Fever	Fever	Diarrhea, abdominal pain and fever	Fever	Diarrhea, abdominal pain and fever	Diarrhea and fever
Listeria serotype	NA	3b	1/2b	1/2b	1/2b	1/2b
Presence of neutropenia	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
Type of nutrition	Oral	Oral	Oral	Oral	Oral/Enteral	Oral
Time (days) from
admission to listeriosis onset	0*	10	9	14	8	7
listeriosis onset to culture result	5	4	9	2	7	4
listeriosis onset to outcome	1	1	26	10	10	3
Antibiotic therapy
Empirical	Cefepime	Ceftriaxone	Cefepime plus metronidazole	Ceftriaxone	Cefepime	None
After culture result	**	**	Ampicillin	Ceftriaxone	Ampicillin	**
Patient outcome	Death	Death	Death	Discharge	Death	Death

NA: isolate not available;

^*patient had undergone chemotherapy in the hematologic day-clinic during the previous three months;

^**patient died before culture result was available