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. the rest