Authors’reply: Concern regarding the alleged spread of hypervirulent lymphogranuloma venereum Chlamydia trachomatis strain in Europe

We agree with the authors of the letter that there is no established official nomenclature for lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV) genovariants. Moreover there are two so-called L2c variants reported in the literature, based on different typing methodologies [3,4]. The reference that we used to characterise the strains in our report was the L2c variant described by Somboonna et al. [4]. In particular, a partial sequence of the ompA gene of this variant was employed for typing, and, as stated in the letter, ‘It is important to recognise that the use of the term ‘L2c genotype’ in the case of the L2-D recombinant strain is a misnomer, as the ompA-genotype of this strain is an archetypal L2’, this sequence proved to be identical, at least at protein level, to the L2 sequence.