To the Editor: Scrub typhus, caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi, is one of the most common infectious diseases of rural southern Asia, southeastern Asia, and the western Pacifi c. The disease is transmitted to humans by the bite of larvae of trombiculid mites harboring the pathogen. The disease often appears as a nonspecifi c febrile illness. The clinical picture of scrub typhus is typically asso...

Meningoencephalitis, a potentially fatal complication of scrub typhus is known to occur but has not been well documented in children. Objectives: To document the epidemiological, clinical and laboratory parameters of scrub typhus meningoencephalitis in children to help the clinician in clinching the diagnosis of scrub typhus infection from Kumaon region. Materials and methods: This is a prospec...

BACKGROUND Laiwu District is recognized as a hyper-endemic region for scrub typhus in Shandong Province, but the seriousness of this problem has been neglected in public health circles. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) approach was adopted to measure the burden of scrub typhus in Laiwu, China during the period 2006 to 2012. A multiple seasonal autoregres...

break of scrub typhus in southern India during cooler months. Ann NY Acad Sci 2003; 990: 359–64. 3. Lewis MD, Yousuf AA, Lerdthusnee K, Razee A, Chandranoi K, Jones JW. Scrub typhus reemergence in the Maldives. Emerg Infect Dis 2003; 9:1638–41. 4. Murdoch DR, Woods CW, Zimmerman MD, et al. The etiology of febrile illness in adults presenting to Patan Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. Am J Trop Med ...

Since its recurrence in 1986, scrub typhus has been occurring annually and it is considered as one of the most prevalent diseases in Korea. Scrub typhus is a 3rd grade nationally notifiable disease that has greatly increased in Korea since 2000. The objective of this study is to construct a disease incidence model for prediction and quantification of the incidences of scrub typhus. Using data f...

BACKGROUND Scrub typhus is a common cause of fever in parts of South East and Southern Asia. Little is known about the disease burden in Vietnam. METHODS A 2-year observational study of scrub typhus at a tertiary referral hospital in northern Vietnam was carried out. Diagnosis was based on a single serological test in patients with suggestive clinical symptoms. RESULTS Scrub typhus was diag...

BACKGROUND Scrub typhus is an acute febrile illness caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi. CASE PRESENTATIONS We encountered a patient with sensorineural hearing loss complicating scrub typhus, and three patients with scrub typhus who complained of otalgia, which was sudden onset, severe, paroxysmal, intermittent yet persistent pain lasting for several seconds, appeared within 1 week after the ons...

Introduction Scrub typhus is an infectious disease caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi, a tiny parasite about the size of bacteria that belongs to the family Rickettsiaceae. Scrub typhus was first described by Hashimoto from Japan in 1899 (1). The term scrub is used because of the type of vegetation (terrain between woods and clearings) that harbours the vector; however, the name is not entirely c...

Orientia tsutsugamushi infection causes scrub typhus, a common zoonosis of rural Asia. Orientia tsutsugamushi was recently detected by a real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay in animal specimens. We evaluated the same qPCR assay in specimens obtained from patients with serologically proven scrub typhus infections. The 47-kDa qPCR assay was more sensitive than was mouse i...

The objective of this study was to determine the optimal cutoff value of serum adenosine deaminase (ADA) activity for diagnosing scrub typhus in acute febrile patients, especially in the autumn. A total of 715 febrile patients were included; 286 of them were diagnosed with acute scrub typhus. The mean serum ADA activities in patients with and without scrub typhus were 42.8 ± 13.4 IU/L and 17.2 ...