FAMILY RICKETTSIACEAE 



1089 



blue with the Castaiieda stain and bright 

 red with a blue background with the 

 Machiavello stain. Gram-negative. 



Cultivation : May be cultivated in 

 plasma tissue culture of mammalian cells, 

 in modified JNIaitland media, and in the 

 yolk sacs of chick embryos. 



Immunology : The disease is related 

 immunologically to Rocky Mountain 

 spotted fever with which it cross im- 

 munizes, but the spotted fever vaccine 

 does not protect against the Mediterra- 

 nean and South African strains of bou- 

 tonneuse fever. 



Serology : Distinguishable from Rick- 

 ettsia rickettsii by complement fixation. 

 Has a common antigenic factor with 

 Proteus 0X19 and 0X2. 



Pathogenicity : Pathogenic for man and 

 guinea pigs. It is also pathogenic in 

 varying degrees for dogs, horses, spermo- 

 philes, monkeys, rabbits, gerbilles and 

 white mice. 



Boutonneuse fever is a much less 

 virulent infection for the guinea pig than 

 Rocky Mountain spotted fever. A tem- 

 perature reaction occurs, accompanied 

 by scrotal swelling but there is no slough- 

 ing. There is practicallj^ no mortality. 

 Passage in guinea pigs is accomplished 



by transfer of blood from an infected 

 animal . 



In man, localized primary sores (taches 

 noires) and an inflammatory reaction in 

 the regional lymph nodes occur at the 

 site of the tick bite. A febrile reaction 

 with exanthema occurs and mortality is 

 low. 



Source : Seen by Caminop^tros 

 (Compt. rend. Soc. Biol., Paris, 110, 1932, 

 344) in smears from the tunica vaginalis 

 of guinea pigs inoculated with infected 

 dog ticks {Rhipiccphalus sanguineus) . 



Habitat: The brown dog tick (Rhipi- 

 cephalus sanguineus) and also the ticks, 

 Amhlyomma hebraeum, Haemaphysalis 

 leachi, Rhipicephalus appendiculatus and 

 Boophilus decolor atus. Transmissible 

 through the ova of adult female ticks. 

 The probable animal reservoir is the dog. 

 The etiological agent of boutonneuse 

 fever in man, also known as eruptive, 

 Mediterranean or Marseilles fever and 

 probably Kenya typhus and South Afri- 

 can tick bite fever, though the identity 

 of the latter with boutonneuse fever has 

 been questioned. 



5. "Rickettsia tsutsugamushi (Haya- 



shi) Ogata. (Theileria tsutsugamushi 



° Some may question the use of this binomial on the ground that Hayashi thought 

 that this species was possibly or probably protozoan in nature when he proposed the 

 name Theileria tsutsugamushi (loc. cit.) in 1920. However he questions whether 

 Theileria is the correct generic name in this paper and accepts the viewpoint that this 

 organism is a rickettsia in a paper published in 1924 entitled. On Rickettsia, Trans. 

 Jap. Path. Soc, 14, 1924, 198-201. He does not use the binomial Rickettsia tsuts^iga- 

 mushi in this paper as indicated by some of his friends in latter papers (Ogata, loc. cit., 

 Ivawamura, loc. cit.) and apparently first uses it himself in a paper entitled, On 

 Tsutsugamushi Disease, Jap. Path. Soc, 22, 1932, 686. 



Hayashi was not the first to recognize the probable rickettsial nature of the organ- 

 ism of the tsutsugamushi disease (see Blake et al., Amer. Jour. Hyg., 41, 1945, 257-262) 

 and some even question whether any of the bodies that he found in human lympho- 

 cytes from lymph nodes, in mononuclear endothelial phagocytes of the spleen and 

 lymph nodes, and in tissues taken from 1 he region of the mite bite in patients suffering 

 from tsutsugamushi fever were the same as organisms described as Rickettsia orien- 

 talis by X'agayo et al. (loc. cit.). 



This position is not supported, however, by Nagayo and his associates who admit 

 that their organisms are identical with some of the organisms described by Hayashi. 

 Mitamura (Trans. Jap. Path. Soc, 21. 1931, 463) sums this up as follows: "Wir stellen 



