Mediterranean spotted fever: clinical and laboratory characteristics of 415 Sicilian children

Mediterranean spotted fever: clinical and laboratory characteristics of 415 Sicilian children

BACKGROUND Mediterranean spotted fever (MSF) is an acute febrile, zoonotic disease caused by Rickettsia conorii and transmitted to humans by the brown dogtick Rhipicephalus sanguineus. Nearly four hundred cases are reported every year (mainly from June to September) on the Italian island of Sicily. The aim of the study was to analyze the clinical and laboratory characteristics of patients with ...

Mediterranean spotted fever : clinical and laboratory characteristics of 415 Sicilian children and evaluation of different therapeutic strategies

Clinical and laboratory ®ndings of boutonneuse fever in Sicilian children

The spectrum of signs and symptoms of 645 consecutive children diagnosed from 1984 to 1996 with boutonneuse fever (BF), a mild rickettsial disease caused by Rickettsia conorii endemic in the Mediterranean basin, are reported. The major clinical features were fever (97.2%), exanthema (96.1%) and ``tache noire'' (71.8%). The large series examined permitted the authors to observe some rare or disr...

Mediterranean spotted fever in Algerian children.

Mediterranean spotted fever (MSF) is a potentially life-threatening zoonosis caused by Rickettsia conorii and transmitted by the brown dog tick Rhipicephalus sanguineus [1]. Although MSF is one of the oldest recognised rickettsioses, there have been few reports about this rickettsiosis in North Africa [1,2]. The present work on MSF cases occurring in children is a subset of a larger study condu...

Epidemiology and clinical features of Mediterranean spotted fever in Italy.

Mediterranean Spotted Fever is caused by Rickettsia conorii and is transmitted to humans by Rhipicephalus sanguineus, the common dog tick. It is characterized by the symptomatologic triad: fever, exanthema and "tache noire", the typical eschar at the site of the tick bite. In Italy the most affected region is Sicily. The seasonal peak of the disease (from June through September) occurs during m...