Population Structure of East African Relapsing Fever Borrelia spp.

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Emerg Infect Dis
• Personal Author:
  Cutler, Sally J. ; Bonilla, E. Margarita ; Singh, Rajbir J.
• Description:
  Differentiation of endemic East African tick-borne relapsing fever Borrelia duttonii spirochetes from epidemic louse-borne relapsing fever (LBRF) B. recurrentis spirochetes into different species has been questioned. We assessed a noncoding intragenic spacer (IGS) region to compare genotypes found in clinical samples from relapsing fever patients. Although IGS typing was highly discriminatory and resolved 4 East African tick-borne relapsing fever groups from a disease-endemic region in Tanzania, 2 IGS clades were found among LBRF patients in Ethiopia. The 2 IGS sequence types for B. recurrentis overlapped with 2 of the 4 groups found among B. duttonii. All cultivable isolates of B. duttonii fell into a single IGS cluster, which suggests their analysis might introduce selective bias. We provide further support that B. recurrentis is a subset of B. duttonii and represents an ecotype rather than a species. These observations have disease control implications and suggest LBRF Borrelia spp. could reemerge from its tick-borne reservoirs where vectors coexist.
• Subjects:
  Blood Donors DNA, Intergenic Humans Phylogeny Polymerase Chain Reaction Relapsing Fever Research
• Source:
  Emerg Infect Dis. 16(7):1076-1080.
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Ethiopia ; Tanzania ; Africa, Eastern
• Location:
  Africa
• Volume:
  16
• Issue:
  7
• Collection(s):
  Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:cf03e38284bcf9a73bcd75584577f195409b0230c041ca5de060696c399600a3
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/18027/cdc_18027_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 120.33 KB ]