1.
Microbes Infect
; 25(5): 105098, 2023 06.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36621527
ABSTRACT
Three Orientia tsutsugamushi genotypic groups belonging to two prototypes (Gilliam and Karp) were identified in scrub typhus patients from Guangxi, Southwest China. Fever, headache, pneumonia, fatigue, chill, and anorexia were the most common clinical signs. Frequent recombination was observed for their 47-kDa gene compared to 56-kDa and 16S genes. Furthermore, patients infected with the Gilliam prototype represent a much higher proportion of pneumonia (6/6, 100%) than those infected with the Karp prototype (4/8, 50%) (p-value = 0.040). This discrepancy is consistent with recent animal tests on rhesus and may indicate different virulence and tissue tropism between different O. tsutsugamushi prototypes.