Scientists discover new, deadly bacteria
Pastor Dale Morgan
Scientists discover new, deadly bacteria*
From correspondents in San Francisco
June 07, 2007 12:56pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse
IN a dramatic case of microbial sleuthing, US scientists say they have
discovered a new, potentially deadly strain of bacteria previously
unknown to medicine.
The bacteria was found in a 43-year-old American woman who had travelled
across Peru for three weeks and suffered from symptoms similar to
typhoid fever or malaria. The woman has since recovered.
Named Bartonella rochalimae, the new species is a close relative of a
microbe that sickened thousands of soldiers during World War I with what
became known as trench fever, spread through body lice.
It is also related to a bacteria identified 10 years ago during the AIDS
epidemic in San Francisco as the cause of cat scratch disease, which
infects 25,000 people a year in the United States.
It was this previous work on cat scratch disease related to AIDS that
helped experts at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and
the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention isolate the new
bacteria found in the female traveller.
The findings are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Two weeks after returning to the United States from her trip to Peru,
the woman experienced potentially life-threatening anaemia, a rash, an
enlarged spleen, insomnia and a high fever that lasted for several weeks.
Her travelling companion did not fall ill.
The Peruvian Andes is home to a related bacteria, spread by sand flies,
and at first this was what experts thought was causing her illness.
Further investigation indicated the culprit was a new species altogether.
The new discovery was the sixth species identified that could infect
humans, said Dr Jane Koehler, professor of infectious diseases at UCSF
and senior author of the paper.
In 1987, Professor Koehler encountered her first patient infected with
Bartonella at the AIDS Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital.
"The bacteria were eating away a bone in the arm of an AIDS patient -
for months,'' Prof Koehler said.
"They can cause extremely painful lesions and tumours of blood vessels
on the skin of immunocompromised patients.''
In 1997, her team discovered that the Bartonella henselae bacterium
causes cat scratch disease. Symptoms include swollen lymph nodes and
fever after a person is scratched by a cat.
The new bacterium is treated with a different antibiotic that those used
for cat scratch disease.
"When a patient has a high and persistent fever, we need to come up with
the correct diagnosis and treatment as soon as possible - particularly
for those with a weakened immune system, who can die from the
infection,'' Prof Koehler said.