[Current endemic expansion of boutonneuse fever in Italy]

Cases of rickettsiosis of all kinds have reduced to mere sporadic episodes in the last thirty years all over the Mediterranean. But in the last five years, some regions of Italy (Lazio, Liguria, Sicily, Sardinia) have registered an extraordinary epidemiological event, the endemoepidemic expansion of boutonneuse fever which was previously only seen in about thirty cases a year. It is now on the increase and 864 cases were notified in 1979, but the real incidence of the disease is much greater. The phenomenon would not appear to have been seen elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Ecological changes involving carrier ticks must be presumed