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. 2015 Dec;21(12):2141-7.
doi: 10.3201/eid2112.140659.

High Prevalence of Intermediate Leptospira spp. DNA in Febrile Humans from Urban and Rural Ecuador

Jorge Chiriboga, Verónica Barragan, Gabriela Arroyo, Andrea Sosa, Dawn N Birdsell, Karool España, Ana Mora, Emilia Espín, María Eugenia Mejía, Melba Morales, Carmina Pinargote, Manuel Gonzalez, Rudy Hartskeerl, Paul Keim, Gustavo Bretas, Joseph N S Eisenberg, Gabriel Trueba

High Prevalence of Intermediate Leptospira spp. DNA in Febrile Humans from Urban and Rural Ecuador

Jorge Chiriboga et al. Emerg Infect Dis. 2015 Dec.

Abstract

Leptospira spp., which comprise 3 clusters (pathogenic, saprophytic, and intermediate) that vary in pathogenicity, infect >1 million persons worldwide each year. The disease burden of the intermediate leptospires is unclear. To increase knowledge of this cluster, we used new molecular approaches to characterize Leptospira spp. in 464 samples from febrile patients in rural, semiurban, and urban communities in Ecuador; in 20 samples from nonfebrile persons in the rural community; and in 206 samples from animals in the semiurban community. We observed a higher percentage of leptospiral DNA-positive samples from febrile persons in rural (64%) versus urban (21%) and semiurban (25%) communities; no leptospires were detected in nonfebrile persons. The percentage of intermediate cluster strains in humans (96%) was higher than that of pathogenic cluster strains (4%); strains in animal samples belonged to intermediate (49%) and pathogenic (51%) clusters. Intermediate cluster strains may be causing a substantial amount of fever in coastal Ecuador.

Keywords: Ecuador; Leptospira spp.; bacteria; carrier animals; febrile; fever; humans; intermediate cluster; intermediate species; prevalence; rrs gene; rural areas; semiurban areas; urban areas; zoonoses.

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Figures

Figure
Figure
Maximum-likelihood tree for DNA sequences of the Leptospira spp. rrs gene recovered from serum samples from febrile humans and from urine and kidney samples from animal carriers in Ecuador. Esmeraldas, Portoviejo, and Guayaquil are 3 rural, semiurban, and urban communities, respectively, along the coast of Ecuador. Pathogenic L. borgpetersenii was used as an outgroup. Numbers in parentheses indicate the percentage of samples per community that contained DNA signatures highly similar to GenBank reference strains L. wolffii (NR_044042), L. inadai (accession no. JQ988844.1), and L. borgpetersenii (accession no. JQ988861.1). Scale bar indicates the degree of nucleotide substitutions.
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