title: Isolation of rickettsia helvetica from ticks in Slovakia.
abstract: To date, only three rickettsial species have been found in ticks in Slovakia by serological and/or molecular-biological techniques, namely Rickettsia slovaca, Candidatus rickettsia IRS, and Rickettsia raoultii. Recently, we succeeded in isolation of the forth species, Rickettsia helvetica from Ixodes ricinus, the most frequent tick in Slovakia. The isolation, positive for 10% of tested ticks, was performed on XTC cells by the shell-vial technique, Gimenez staining and light microscopy. The infected cell cultures contained rod-shaped particles morphologically identical to rickettsiae. The isolation was confirmed by direct detection of a fragment of the R. helvetica gene for citrate synthase in the positive ticks by PCR and its subsequent cloning, sequencing and comparison with the database.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Rickettsia helvetica; isolation; Ixodes ricinus; Slovakia.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Virology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9,845 05 Bratislava, Slovak Republic.
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Sekeyová
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Mediannikov
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Subramanian
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kowalczewska
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Quevedo-Diaz
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kocianová
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Raoult
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D018884:Ixodes / Q000382:microbiology*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D012281:Rickettsia / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D018154:Slovakia
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins