title: Molecular epidemiology of Q fever in Poland.
abstract: Coxiella burnetii is the etiologic agent of Q fever, a worldwide distributed zoonosis, accountable for serious health problem both for humans and animals. The exposure to C. burnetii infected animals and their products is the main risk factor for Q fever in humans. Several outbreaks of Q fever have been described in Poland which sources were recognized to be related to imported animals and their products or to wildlife using serological methods. Moreover, some of them have been confirmed by isolation of C. burnetii strains. In this study, multispacer sequence typing (MST) and multiple loci variable number tandem repeats (VNTR) analysis (MLVA) have been used to characterize C. burnetii strains isolated in Poland. A total of two sequence types (MST) and four MLVA types were identified among 6 C. burnetii isolates examined. This study highlighted the usefulness of these methods in the improvement of epidemiological investigations of Q fever loci on the Polish territory.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Public Health-National Institute of Hygiene, Warsaw, Poland. tchmielewski@pzh.gov.pl
authors.forename: Tomasz
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chmielewski
authors.forename: Karim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sidi-Boumedine
authors.forename: Véronique
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Duquesne
authors.forename: Edyta
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Podsiadly
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Thiéry
authors.forename: Stanislawa
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tylewska-Wierzbanowska
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques; D002417:Cattle; D016997:Coxiella burnetii / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D021901:DNA, Intergenic / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats; D010920:Placenta / Q000382:microbiology; D011044:Poland / Q000453:epidemiology; D011247:Pregnancy; D011778:Q Fever / Q000453:epidemiology*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D021901:DNA, Intergenic