"Candidatus Borrelia kalaharica" Detected from a Febrile Traveller Returning to Germany from Vacation in Southern Africa.

ABSTRACT: A 26 year-old female patient presented to the Tropical Medicine outpatient unit of the Ludwig Maximilians-University in Munich with febrile illness after returning from Southern Africa, where she contracted a bite by a large mite-like arthropod, most likely a soft-tick. Spirochetes were detected in Giemsa stained blood smears and treatment was started with doxycycline for suspected tick-borne relapsing fever. The patient eventually recovered after developing a slight Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction during therapy. PCR reactions performed from EDTA-blood revealed a 16S rRNA sequence with 99.4% similarity to both, Borrelia duttonii, and B. parkeri. Further sequences obtained from the flagellin gene (flaB) demonstrated genetic distances of 0.066 and 0.097 to B. parkeri and B. duttonii, respective

SUBMITTER: Fingerle V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4816561 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature