Two new leptospiral serovars in the Hebdomadis serogroup isolated from Zimbabwe cattle

Four strains belonging to the genus Leptospira serogroup Hebdomadis were isolated from Zimbabwe cattle at slaughter. These isolates were subjected to cross-agglutinin absorption tests and to restriction fragment length polymorphism and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analyses of their genomic DNAs. One of these strains represents a new serovar, for which the name mhou is proposed; strain SBF 40 is the reference strain of this serovar. The other three strains belong to a second new serovar, for which the name marondera is proposed; the reference strain of this serovar is strain SBF 5. The three strains of serovar marondera could be differentiated by their restriction fragment polymorphism and pulsed-field gel electrophoretic patterns.