Thursday, June 07, 2007

Peru trekker's mystery bug is new to science
UCSF researchers identify bacterium as cause of ailment

Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2007

UCSF researchers have identified a new species of bacteria, similar to the bug that caused trench fever in World War I, in an American tourist who was sickened after a spending three weeks trekking in Peru.

The culprit is a microscopic bacterium resembling a baked bean with a straggly beard. The university scientists have named it Bartonella rochalimae (ro-cha-li-ma-e), after a prominent Brazilian scientist, Henrique da Rocha-Lima, who decades ago identified the bacterium that causes typhus, and named the bacteria that caused trench fever, a painful scourge that immobilized tens of thousands of World War I soldiers.
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