We enrolled consecutive febrile admissions to two hospitals in Moshi, Tanzania. Confirmed leptospirosis was defined as a ≥ 4-fold increase in microscopic agglutination test (MAT) titer; probable leptospirosis as reciprocal MAT titer ≥ 800; and exposure to pathogenic leptospires as titer ≥ 100. Among 870 patients enrolled in the study, 453 (52.1%) had paired sera available, and 40 (8.8%) of thes...

Leptospirosis caused by pathogenic species of the genus Leptospira is a re-emerging zoonotic disease, which affects a wide variety of host species and is transmitted by contaminated water. The genomes of several pathogenic Leptospira species contain a gene named invA, which contains a Nudix domain. However, the function of this gene has never been characterized. Here, we demonstrated that the i...

Leptospirosis is an emerging disease around the globe. South Andaman Island is an endemic region for leptospirosis. We herein compared the prevalence of leptospires in urban and rural areas of South Andaman Island. The PCR detection and isolation of Leptospira revealed that pathogenic leptospires were prevalent in sewage water and household drainage water in urban areas and in paddy fields, veg...

BACKGROUND Renal carriage and shedding of leptospires is characteristic of carrier or maintenance animal hosts. Sporadic reports indicate that after infection, humans may excrete leptospires for extended periods. We hypothesized that, like mammalian reservoir hosts, humans develop asymptomatic leptospiruria in settings of high disease transmission such as the Peruvian Amazon. METHODOLOGY/PRIN...

Heat-killed pathogenic Leptospira interrogans serovar rachmati induced the production of gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) and the IFN-gamma-inducing cytokines interleukin-12p40 (IL-12p40) and tumor necrosis factor alpha in human whole blood in vitro. The production of IFN-gamma was largely dependent on IL-12. These data establish that pathogenic leptospires can stimulate the production of type I cy...

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE The genus Leptospira comprises pathogenic and saprophytic strains. Conventional methods for the identification of pathogenic leptospiral isolates are cumbersome and laborious. In view of these limitations, the search for alternative methods have been focused on DNA based techniques. In this study, we have developed an effective method for the rapid identification of pathogeni...

Johnson, Russell C. (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis), and Louis H. Muschel. Antileptospiral activity of serum. I. Normal and immune serum. J. Bacteriol. 91:1403-1409. 1966.-Normal serum was found to exert a leptospiricidal effect, mediated by the complement system, against the nonpathogenic leptospires. Although resistant to normal serum, the pathogenic serotypes were susceptible to antis...

Leptospires are ubiquitous spirochetes. While the butchers, laboratory personnel who handle laboratory animals saprophytic species is a usual contaminant of surface waters, etc. are at high risk for contracting leptospirosis by direct the primary habitat of the pathogenic species is the distal transmission. When the immediate source of infection is tubules of the kidneys of rodents, the reservo...

BACKGROUND Although previous data indicate that the overall incidence of human leptospirosis in the Peruvian Amazon is similar in urban and rural sites, severe leptospirosis has been observed only in the urban context. As a potential explanation for this epidemiological observation, we tested the hypothesis that concentrations of more virulent Leptospira would be higher in urban than in rural e...