title: "Candidatus Borrelia kalaharica" Detected from a Febrile Traveller Returning to Germany from Vacation in Southern Africa.
abstract: A 26 year-old female patient presented to the Tropical Medicine outpatient unit of the Ludwig Maximilians-University in Munich with febrile illness after returning from Southern Africa, where she contracted a bite by a large mite-like arthropod, most likely a soft-tick. Spirochetes were detected in Giemsa stained blood smears and treatment was started with doxycycline for suspected tick-borne relapsing fever. The patient eventually recovered after developing a slight Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction during therapy. PCR reactions performed from EDTA-blood revealed a 16S rRNA sequence with 99.4% similarity to both, Borrelia duttonii, and B. parkeri. Further sequences obtained from the flagellin gene (flaB) demonstrated genetic distances of 0.066 and 0.097 to B. parkeri and B. duttonii, respectively. Fragments of the uvrA gene revealed genetic distance of 0.086 to B. hermsii in genetic analysis and only distant relations with classic Old World relapsing fever species. This revealed the presence of a novel species of tick-borne relapsing fever spirochetes that we propose to name "Candidatus Borrelia kalaharica", as it was contracted from an arthropod bite in the Kalahari Desert belonging to both, Botswana and Namibia, a region where to our knowledge no relapsing fever has been described so far. Interestingly, the novel species shows more homology to New World relapsing fever Borrelia such as B. parkeri or B. hermsii than to known Old World species such as B. duttonii or B. crocidurae.
authors.affiliation: National Reference Centre for Borrelia, Bayerisches Landesamt für Gesundheit und Lebensmittelsicherheit (LGL), Dienststelle Oberschleißheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Fingerle
authors.affiliation: Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Medical Center of the LMU, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pritsch
authors.affiliation: Department of Haematology, Oncology, Immunology, Palliative Care, Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Klinikum Schwabing, Akademisches Lehrkrankenhaus der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität und Technischen Universität, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wächtler
authors.affiliation: National Reference Centre for Borrelia, Bayerisches Landesamt für Gesundheit und Lebensmittelsicherheit (LGL), Dienststelle Oberschleißheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Margos
authors.affiliation: Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Medical Center of the LMU, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ruske
authors.affiliation: Department of Bacteriology, Max von Pettenkofer-Institute LMU Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Jette
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.affiliation: Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Medical Center of the LMU, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Löscher
authors.affiliation: Department of Haematology, Oncology, Immunology, Palliative Care, Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Klinikum Schwabing, Akademisches Lehrkrankenhaus der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität und Technischen Universität, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Clemens
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wendtner
authors.affiliation: Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Medical Center of the LMU, Munich, Germany.|Department of Bacteriology, Max von Pettenkofer-Institute LMU Munich, Germany.|College of Public Health and Medical Science, Jimma University, Jimma, Ethiopia.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wieser
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000353:Africa, Southern / Q000453:epidemiology; D001898:Borrelia / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D010802:Phylogeny; D012329:RNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / Q000235:genetics; D012061:Relapsing Fever / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000382:microbiology*; D014195:Travel
chemical_list: D012329:RNA, Bacterial; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S