Louse-borne relapsing fever-A systematic review and analysis of the literature: Part 1-Epidemiology and diagnostic aspects.

ABSTRACT: Louse-borne relapsing fever (LBRF) is a classical epidemic disease, which in the past was associated with war, famine, poverty, forced migration, and crowding under poor hygienic conditions around the world. The disease's causative pathogen, the spirochete bacterium Borrelia recurrentis, is confined to humans and transmitted by a single vector, the human body louse Pediculus humanus. Since the disease has had its heyday before the days of modern medicine, many of its aspects have never been formally studied and to date, remain incompletely understood. In order to shed light on some of these aspects, we have systematically reviewed the accessible literature on LBRF, since the recognition of its mode of transmission in 1907, and summarized the existing data on epidemiology and diagnostic asp

SUBMITTER: Kahlig P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7951878 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature