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Updated: Jun 11, 2026

Cultivation Methods of Spirochetes from Borrelia burgdorferi Sensu Lato Complex and Relapsing Fever Borrelia
Published on: November 25, 2022
Population structure of East African relapsing fever Borrelia spp
Sally J Cutler1, E Margarita Bonilla, Rajbir J Singh
1University of East London, Water Lane, Stratford, London E15 4LZ, UK. s.cutler@uel.ac.uk
Abstract:
Differentiation of endemic East African tick-borne relapsing fever Borrelia duttonii spirochetes from epidemic louse-borne relapsing fever (LBRF) B. recurrentis spirochetes into different species has been questioned. We assessed a noncoding intragenic spacer (IGS) region to compare genotypes found in clinical samples from relapsing fever patients. Although IGS typing was highly discriminatory and resolved 4 East African tick-borne relapsing fever groups from a disease-endemic region in Tanzania, 2 IGS clades were found among LBRF patients in Ethiopia. The 2 IGS sequence types for B. recurrentis overlapped with 2 of the 4 groups found among B. duttonii. All cultivable isolates of B. duttonii fell into a single IGS cluster, which suggests their analysis might introduce selective bias. We provide further support that B. recurrentis is a subset of B. duttonii and represents an ecotype rather than a species. These observations have disease control implications and suggest LBRF Borrelia spp. could reemerge from its tick-borne reservoirs where vectors coexist.
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