Prosthetic Valve Endocarditis with Bartonella washoensis in a Human European Patient and Its Detection in Red Squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris)

Friederike D von Loewenich; Christof Seckert; Elke Dauber; Marja J L Kik; Ankje de Vries; Hein Sprong; Katja Buschmann; Matthew L Aardema; Moritz Brandstetter

doi:10.1128/JCM.01404-19

Prosthetic Valve Endocarditis with Bartonella washoensis in a Human European Patient and Its Detection in Red Squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris)

J Clin Microbiol. 2019 Dec 23;58(1):e01404-19. doi: 10.1128/JCM.01404-19. Print 2019 Dec 23.

Authors

Friederike D von Loewenich¹, Christof Seckert², Elke Dauber², Marja J L Kik³, Ankje de Vries⁴, Hein Sprong⁴, Katja Buschmann⁵, Matthew L Aardema^{6

7}, Moritz Brandstetter²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany friederike.loewenich@unimedizin-mainz.de.
² Department of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
³ Dutch Wildlife Health Center, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
⁴ Center for Infectious Disease Control, National Institute for Public Health and Environment, Bilthoven, The Netherlands.
⁵ Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery, University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
⁶ Department of Biology, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey, USA.
⁷ Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, The American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, USA.

Abstract

Members of the genus Bartonella are fastidious Gram-negative facultative intracellular bacteria that are typically transmitted by arthropod vectors. Several Bartonella spp. have been found to cause culture-negative endocarditis in humans. Here, we report the case of a 75-year-old German woman with prosthetic valve endocarditis due to Bartonella washoensis The infecting agent was characterized by sequencing of six housekeeping genes (16S rRNA, ftsZ, gltA, groEL, ribC, and rpoB), applying a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) approach. The 5,097 bp of the concatenated housekeeping gene sequence from the patient were 99.0% identical to a sequence from a B. washoensis strain isolated from a red squirrel (Sciurus vulgarisorientis) from China. A total of 39% (24/62) of red squirrel (S. vulgaris) samples from the Netherlands were positive for the B. washoensisgltA gene variant detected in the patient. This suggests that the red squirrel is the reservoir host for human infection in Europe.

Keywords: Bartonella washoensis; Europe; Sciurus vulgaris; endocarditis; human; multilocus sequence typing (MLST); red squirrel; reservoir.

Publication types

Case Reports

MeSH terms

Aged
Animal Diseases / microbiology*
Animals
Bartonella Infections / diagnosis*
Bartonella Infections / microbiology*
Bartonella Infections / transmission
Bartonella* / classification
Bartonella* / genetics
DNA, Bacterial
Disease Reservoirs
Endocarditis, Bacterial / diagnosis*
Endocarditis, Bacterial / microbiology*
Endocarditis, Bacterial / transmission
Europe
Female
Heart Valve Diseases / diagnosis*
Heart Valve Diseases / microbiology*
Humans
Male
Phylogeny
Phylogeography
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / genetics
Sciuridae / microbiology

Substances

DNA, Bacterial
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S