New Bacterium is Discovered

Jun 11, 11:52 AM

Current Headlines: U.S. scientists have identified a new bacterium related to so-called trench fever, producing symptoms similar to those of malaria or typhoid fever.

University of California-San Francisco researchers isolated the bacterium from a woman who had been on vacation in the Peruvian Andes.

A UCSF infectious disease team, in collaboration with colleagues from other institutions, found the new microbe is genetically similar to one spread by body lice in the trenches during World War I. That bacterium -- Bartonella quint -- caused a disease known as trench fever, and debilitated tens of thousands of soldiers with severe leg and back pain and recurrent fevers.

The new species, named Bartonella rochalimae, is also closely related to the bacterium Bartonella henselae, identified about 10 years ago as the cause of cat scratch disease that infects more than 25,000 people a year in the United States.

The discovery is reported in the June 7 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.