In 1916, Weinberg and Séguin isolated this bacterium from patients with gas gangrene and called it Bacillus histolyticus.

Intramuscular injection of culture caused extensive local tissue destruction, extrusion of a hemorrhagic muscle pulp, splitting of the skin, denudation of the bone, and sometimes autoamputation.

In 1922, Heller renamed the bacterium Weinbergillus histolyticus, and a year later Bergey, Harrison, et al. reclassified it as Clostridium histolyticum.

[4] On blood agar, colonies appear small, rough, irregularly round, and are surrounded by a zone of weak hemolysis.

[5] Hathewaya histolytica is difficult to culture because growth is inhibited by sugars, and spores are not very heat resistant.

Beta-toxin plays a major role in the pathogenicity of H. histolytica, due to its ability to destroy collagen fibers in the body and cause necrosis.

[6] Toxigenic strains of Hathewaya histolytica secrete proteinases and collagenases that can degrade and necrotize organs and muscles in the human body.

H. histolytica proteinases, including gamma- and delta-toxin, digest native and denatured proteins to amino acids with the production of ammonia.

[5] Hathewaya histolytica proteinases are unique in their efficiency of converting tissue proteins to amino acids and peptides.

This disease causes flexion contractures of the joints, severely limiting hand function, most often in the ring and little fingers.

Studies have shown that injection of collagenase clostridium histolyticum significantly reduces the contractures by lysing the collagen and disrupting the contracted cords.

Side effects are mild, and this treatment is preferred to surgical options because no extensive hand therapy is required post-treatment.

Hathewaya histolytica secretes potent exotoxins that have proteolytic and necrotizing properties, causing severe local necrosis.

All diagnostic tests in this case were negative or normal until an anaerobic blood culture identified H. histolytica as the infectious agent isolated from the heart valve tissue.

[8] Hathewaya histolytica can cause gas gangrene, an acute infection of pain, fever, myonecrosis, and massive edema.

[11] While gas gangrene is easily diagnosed by the visible necrosis and characteristic smell, identifying Hathewaya histolytica as the causative agent is more difficult.

Further, a cocktail of antimicrobials targeting aerobic and anaerobic gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria may be used in necrotizing infections caused by multiple species, including H.