Human Exposure to Novel Bartonella Species from Contact with Fruit Bats

Abstract

Twice a year in southwestern Nigeria, during a traditional bat festival, community participants enter designated caves to capture bats, which are then consumed for food or traded. We investigated the presence of Bartonella species in Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) and bat flies (Eucampsipoda africana) from these caves and assessed whether Bartonella infections had occurred in persons from the surrounding communities. Our results indicate that these bats and flies harbor Bartonella strains, which multilocus sequence typing indicated probably represent a novel Bartonella species, proposed as Bartonella rousetti. In serum from 8 of 204 persons, we detected antibodies to B. rousetti without cross-reactivity to other Bartonella species. This work suggests that bat-associated Bartonella strains might be capable of infecting humans.

Keywords: Bartonella; Nigeria; bacteria; bat festival; bat flies; bats; human; vector-borne infections; zoonoses.

Figure

Phylogenetic relationships of Bartonella rousetti (proposed name) obtained from Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) collected in Nigeria, 2010 and 2013, and other Bartonella species and bat-associated Bartonella based on internal transcribed spacer sequences. The neighbor-joining method by the Kimura 2-parameter distance method and bootstrap calculation was conducted with 1,000 replicates for phylogenetic analysis. The internal transcribed spacer sequence obtained from the bat flies was closely clustered with B. rousetti. GenBank accession numbers are provided for the B. rousetti sequence and the comparison sequences.