22 de febrero de 2010

Garcia N., Iriso A., Perez-Sancho M., Alvarez J., Martin-Otero LE., Benitez P. y Goyache J.

Comunicación presentada en 8th ASM Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting

The genus Rickettsia includes a large number of bacteria considered important emerging tick-borne human pathogens. The genus is divided into three groups: the typhus group (TG), the scrub typhus group and the spotted fever group (SFG). SFG rickettsiae include several pathogenic and nonpathogenic species such as R. conori, R. massilae and R. raoultii. R. raoultii was first isolated in Russia in 1999 and defined as a new species in 2008. Since then this agent has been detected in different European scenarios implicated in human and animal disease and mainly associated with Dermacentor ticks.
In recent years a number of studies performed on ticks recovered from domestic and wild animals as well as from the environment in different regions of Spain demonstrated that SFG rickettsiae other than R. conorii have a higher prevalence than previously thought, which was surprising because R. conorii seemed to be the prevailing rickettsial agent