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    Rickettsia: Introduction, Characteristics, Classification

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    Mohammed Shahanewz
    Rickettsia are obligate intracellular, gram-negative bacteria that are transmitted to humans via arthropod vectors like ticks, fleas, mites, and lice. They cause diseases such as typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and African tick bite fever. Rickettsia are classified into the typhus group, which includes R. prowazekii and R. typhi, or the spotted fever group, which includes R. rickettsii. Treatment involves antibiotics like tetracyclines. Prevention focuses on avoiding arthropod bites and removing ticks from pets and yards.

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    Rickettsia: Introduction, Characteristics, Classification

    Uploaded by

    Mohammed Shahanewz
    79 views5 pages
    Rickettsia are obligate intracellular, gram-negative bacteria that are transmitted to humans via arthropod vectors like ticks, fleas, mites, and lice. They cause diseases such as typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and African tick bite fever. Rickettsia are classified into the typhus group, which includes R. prowazekii and R. typhi, or the spotted fever group, which includes R. rickettsii. Treatment involves antibiotics like tetracyclines. Prevention focuses on avoiding arthropod bites and removing ticks from pets and yards.

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    Preliminary conceptions about Rickettsia— Introduction, Characteristics & Classification.

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    Rickettsia

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    Rickettsia are obligate intracellular, gram-negative bacteria that are transmitted to humans via arthropod vectors like ticks, fleas, mites, and lice. They cause diseases such as typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and African tick bite fever. Rickettsia are classified into the typhus group, which includes R. prowazekii and R. typhi, or the spotted fever group, which includes R. rickettsii. Treatment involves antibiotics like tetracyclines. Prevention focuses on avoiding arthropod bites and removing ticks from pets and yards.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    79 views5 pages

    Rickettsia: Introduction, Characteristics, Classification

    Uploaded by

    Mohammed Shahanewz
    Rickettsia are obligate intracellular, gram-negative bacteria that are transmitted to humans via arthropod vectors like ticks, fleas, mites, and lice. They cause diseases such as typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and African tick bite fever. Rickettsia are classified into the typhus group, which includes R. prowazekii and R. typhi, or the spotted fever group, which includes R. rickettsii. Treatment involves antibiotics like tetracyclines. Prevention focuses on avoiding arthropod bites and removing ticks from pets and yards.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 5

     

     
     

    Rickettsia 
    Introduction, Characteristics, Classification 
     
     
    Compiled by: M
    ​ ohammed Shahanewz Nayeem   
     
     
     
     
     
    Introduction

    Rickettsia is a genus of ​Rickettsieae​ tribe of Rickettsiaceae family, which involves


    obligate intracellular, non-motile, pleomorphic, gram-negative bacteria that are
    distributed throughout the world. It's sister genres are-
    - Rochalimaea
    - Coxiella
    Rickettsia genus is named after Howard Taylor Ricketts, due to his enthusiastic work
    on tick-borne spotted fever.
    Their life cycle involves arthropod vectors and vertebrate hosts including humans.
    Transmission occurs via bites of bloodsucking arthropods, i.e. ticks, fleas, mites and
    lice. Their entry, growth & replication occurs in the cytoplasm of living cells.
    Their invasion leads to various diseases including typhus, rickettsialpox,
    boutonneuse fever, African tick-bite fever etc.
    They are sensitive to antibacterials like Tetracyclines & Chloramphenicol.
    It's prevention involves- preventing tick bites, preventing ticks on pets & yards.

    Characteristics

    They are originally thought to be virus, because of-


    - their minute size(0.3–2.0 µm),
    - poor sensitivity to gram staining, They are difficult to stain with ordinary
    bacterial stains but, conveniently, are stained by the Gimenez method,
    - their obligate parasitic nature,(except ​Coxiella​)

    They are considered as Bacteria because of their other characteristics. They are—
    - Presence of both DNA & RNA
    - Presence of Ribosome
    - Presence of Muramic acid in cell wall
    - Containing metabolically active enzymes
    - Synthesis of ATP as a source of energy
    - Multiplication via binary fission
    - Inhibition via antibacterial drugs, i.e. tetracyclines & chloramphenicol.

    A. Features
    I. Transmission- by arthropod vectors.
    II. Multiplication- within the cytoplasm, sometimes within the nucleus of the
    host cell.
    III. Laboratory culture-
    a. in a host cell, Ex. Guinea pigs or mice.
    b. in embryonated chicken eggs, specifically in the cells of the yolk sac
    membrane.
    c. in tissue cell cultures, usually cells from 10-day-old chicken embryos.
    IV. Dysfunctions-
    - Rocky Mountain spotted fever (via ticks),
    - Classical typhus fever (via lice),
    - Murine typhus fever (via fleas),
    - Rickettsialpox (via mites).

    Classification

    Based on serological characteristics, Rickettsia can be classified into two categories


    in a wide spectrum. They are:
    1. the ​typhus​ group (TG) and
    2. the ​spotted fever​ group (SFG).
    Historically ‘scrub typhus group’ was considered as it's third group & ​Rickettsia
    tsutsugamushi​ was it's member. But after assigning of Orientia genus, it is
    renamed as ​Orientia tsutsugamushi​ and considered as a part of Orientia​.

    Using multigenic approaches, the SPG is subdivided into two clade or sister groups.
    They are-
    1. the ​ancestral​ group/clade (AG) and
    2. the ​transitional​ group/clade (TRG)

    Two species of TG are known as human pathogenic species. They are-


    - the louse-borne ​Rickettsia prowazekii​ (the agent of epidemic typhus) and
    - the flea-borne ​Rickettsia typhi​ (the agent of endemic typhus).
    Whereas 13 species of (SFG) are known to be involved in human dysfunctions. Some
    of them are-
    - R. rickettsii​ (the agent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever)
    - R. africae​ (the agent of African tick bite fever),
    - R. conorii​ (the agent of Mediterranean spotted fever – MSF or boutonneuse
    fever)
    - R. sibirica​ (the agent of North Asian tick-borne fever),

    The ancestral group (AG) includes Rickettsia bellii and ​Rickettsia canadensis.​ Both
    of them are tick-borne.
    The transitional group (TRG) involves
    - mite-borne ​Rickettsia akari​ (the agent of rickettsialpox),
    - tick-borne ​Rickettsia australis​ (the agent of North Queensland tick typhus),
    and
    - flea-borne ​Rickettsia felis​ (the agent of flea-borne spotted fever)

    Rickettsia Diseases Vectors Host


    Species

    Typhus group:

    Epidemic typhus Human body lice Human

    Rickettsia prowazekii Human


    Recrudescent
    typhus Lice, Fleas Flying Squirrels

    Fleas Rodents
    R. typhii Murine typhus
    Fleas Opossums

    R. felis Murine typhus like Fleas Opossums

    Spotted Fever group:

    Rocky Mountain Small


    R. rickettsii spotted fever Tics mammals, dogs,
    rabbits, birds

    R. conorii Boutonneuse fever Tics Rodent dogs

    R. australis Queensland tick Ticks Rodents


    typhus

    R. akari Rickettsialpox Mites House mice,


    rats

    Others:

    Small
    Coxiella burnetii Q fever Tics mammals,
    sheep, goats,
    cattle, dogs

    Pathogenic Rickettsia & their Arthropod vectors


    References: 

    1. Ryan, E. T. & Hill, D. R. & Solomon, T & Endy, T. P. & Aronson, N. (2020). Chapter
    69- Tick-borne Spotted Fever Rickettsioses, Hunter's Tropical Medicine and
    Emerging Infectious Disease (Tenth Edition), pp. 587-593. Elsevier Health Sciences,
    2019. Available at: ​Google books​.
    2. Tang, Yi-Wei & Sussman, M. & Liu, D. & Poxton, I. & Schwartzman, J. Chapter 112 -
    Orientia, Molecular Medical Microbiology (Second Edition), Volume 3, 2015, Pages
    2057-2096. Academic Press 2015. Available at:
    https://doi.org/10.1016/C2010-1-67744-9​.
    3. Tang, Yi-Wei & Sussman, M. & Liu, D. & Poxton, I. & Schwartzman, J. Chapter 111 -
    Rickettsia, Molecular Medical Microbiology (Second Edition), Volume 3, 2015, Pages
    2043-2056. Academic Press 2015. Available at:
    https://doi.org/10.1016/C2010-1-67744-9​.
    4. Pelczar, M.J. & Chan, JR., E. C. S. & Krieg, N. R. Chapter 13 - The World of Bacteria
    I: "Ordinary" Gram-Negative Bacteria, Microbiology (Fifth Edition), 1993, pp. 27.
    5. Wickens, H. & Finch, R. Clinical uses of antimicrobial drugs, Hugo and Russell’s
    Pharmaceutical Microbiology (8th edition), pp. 234.
    6. La Scola, B. & Raoult, D. Laboratory diagnosis of rickettsioses: current approaches to
    diagnosis of old and new rickettsial diseases. J Clin Microbiol. 1997;35:2715–27.

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