Borrelia hispanica relapsing fever, Morocco

Abstract

We found that 20.5% of patients with an unexplained fever in northwestern Morocco had tick-borne relapsing fever. Molecular detection specific for the 16S rRNA gene identified Borrelia hispanica. The noncoding intergenic spacer sequence domain showed high sensitivity and good resolution for this species.

Figure 1

Locations in the Kenitra District of Morocco where tick-borne relapsing fever was diagnosed. A, Sidi Mohamed Lahmar; B, Had Ouled Jelloum; C, Idrissi Kenitra; D, Lalla Mimouna; E, Mnasra; F, Sidi Taybi.

Figure 2

Phylogenetic trees constructed by the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean method, by using a pairwise deletion procedure. Distances were calculated by using the Jukes and Cantor method (www.tau.ac.il/~doronadi/jc.pdf). Sequences from GenBank are indicated by accession numbers. A) Phylogenetic tree based on the 16S rRNA sequences of 12 Borrelia hispanica DNA samples from patients in Morocco. Sequences from this study submitted to GenBank are accession nos. GQ202254–GQ202265. B) Phylogenetic tree based on noncoding 16S–23S intergenic spacer sequences of 23 B. hispanica DNA samples from patients in Morocco. Sequences from this study submitted to GenBank are accession nos. FJ827568–FJ827590. The letters S or H indicate the location at which the sample was obtained: S, Sidi Mohamed Lahmar; H, Had Ouled Jelloum. Scale bars indicate genetic distances between DNA sequences.