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| Many species of Rickettsia can cause illnesses in humans (Table 4-18). The term “rickettsiae” conventionally embraces a polyphyletic group of microorganisms in the class Proteobacteria, comprising species belonging to the genera Rickettsia, Orientia, Ehrlichia, Anaplasma, Neo-rickettsia, Coxiella, and Bartonella. These agents are usually not transmissible directly from person to person except by blood transfusion or organ transplantation, although sexual and placental transmission has been proposed for Coxiella. Transmission generally occurs via an infected arthropod vector or through exposure to an infected animal reservoir host. However, sennetsu fever is acquired following consumption of raw fish products. The clinical severity and duration of illnesses associated with different rickettsial infections vary considerably, even within a given antigenic group. Rickettsioses range in severity from diseases that are usually relatively mild (rickettsialpox, cat scratch disease, and African tick-bite fever) to those that can be life-threatening (epidemic and murine typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, scrub typhus and Oroya fever), and they vary in duration from those that can be self-limiting to chronic (Q fever and bartonelloses) or recrudescent (Brill-Zinsser disease). Most patients with rickettsial infections recover with timely use of appropriate antibiotic therapy.
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| Travelers may be at risk for exposure to agents of rickettsial diseases if they engage in occupational or recreational activities which bring them into contact with habitats that support the vectors or animal reservoir species associated with these pathogens.
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| ==Epidemic Typhus and Trench Fever==
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| Epidemic typhus and trench fever, which are caused by Rickettsia prowazkeii and Bartonella quintanta, respectively, are transmitted from one person to another by the human body louse (3-4). Contemporary outbreaks of both diseases are rare in most developed countries and generally occur only in communities and populations in which body louse infestations are frequent, especially during the colder months when louse-infested clothing is not laundered. Foci of trench fever have also been recognized among homeless populations in urban centers of industrialized countries. Travelers who are not at risk of exposure to body lice or to persons with lice are unlikely to acquire these illnesses. However, health-care workers who care for these patients may be at risk for acquiring louse-borne illnesses through inhalation or inoculation of infectious louse feces into the skin or conjunctiva. In the eastern United States, campers, inhabitants of wooded areas, and wildlife workers can acquire sylvatic epidemic typhus if they come in close contact with flying squirrels, their ectoparasites, or their nests, which can be made in houses, cabins, and tree-holes.
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| [[Category:DiseaseState]] | |
| [[Category:Infectious disease]]
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