Human Rickettsia heilongjiangensis infection, Japan

Abstract

A case of Rickettsia heilongjiangensis infection in Japan was identified in a 35-year-old man who had rash, fever, and eschars. Serum contained R. heilongjiangensis antibodies, and eschars contained R. heilongjiangensis DNA. R. heilongjiangensis was also isolated from ticks in the suspected geographic area of infection.

Figure 1

Phylogenetic analysis of citrate synthase (gltA) sequences of Rickettsia spp. Sequences were aligned by using MEGA4 software (www.megasoftware.net). Neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree construction and bootstrap analyses were performed according to the Kimura 2-parameter distances method. Pairwise alignments and multiple alignments were performed with an open gap penalty of 15 and a gap extension penalty of 6.66. The percentage of replicate trees in which the associated taxa were clustered together in the bootstrap test (1,000 replicates) was calculated. Phylogenetic branches were supported by bootstrap values of >80%. All positions containing alignment gaps and missing data were eliminated in pairwise sequence comparisons (pairwise deletion). Scale bar indicates the percentage of sequence divergence. Arrows indicate eschar specimens.

Figure 2

Distribution of reported Japanese spotted fever cases in Japan (≈2008). Prefectures in which Japanese spotted fever cases were reported up to 2008 are shown in black; Fukui, Aomori, and Miyagi prefectures are shown in gray. The map was drawn by using data on reported infectious diseases in Japan (http://idsc.nih.go.jp/idwr/pdf-j.html).