Rickettsia felis in Cat Fleas, Ctenocephalides felis Parasitizing Opossums, San Bernardino County, California

Authors

Kyle F. Abramowicz, Centers for Disease Control and PreventionFollow
J. W. Wekesa, Division of Environmental Health Services, Department of Public Health, Mosquito and Vector Control Program, San Bernardino, CA
C. N. Nwadike, Division of Environmental Health Services, Department of Public Health, Mosquito and Vector Control Program, San Bernardino, CA
Maria L. Zambrano, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Sandor E. Karpathy, Centers for Disease Control and PreventionFollow
D. Cecil, Division of Geographic Information, Department of Information Services, San Bernardino, CA
J. Burns, California Department of Public Health, Center for Infectious Diseases, Vector-Borne Disease Section, Ontario, CA
R. Hu, California Department of Public Health, Center for Infectious Diseases, Vector-Borne Disease Section, Ontario, CAFollow
Marina E. Eremeeva, Georgia Southern UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2012

Publication Title

Medical and Veterinary Entomology

DOI

10.1111/j.1365-2915.2012.01017.x

Abstract

Los Angeles and Orange Counties are known endemic areas for murine typhus in California; however, no recent reports of flea-borne rickettsioses are known from adjacent San Bernardino County. Sixty-five opossums (Didelphis virginiana) were trapped in the suburban residential and industrial zones of the southwestern part of San Bernardino County in 2007. Sixty out of 65 opossums were infested with fleas, primarily cat fleas, Ctenocephalides felis (Bouché, 1835). The flea minimum infection rate with Rickettsia felis was 13.3% in pooled samples and the prevalence was 23.7% in single fleas, with two gltA genotypes detected. In spite of historic records of murine typhus in this area, no evidence for circulation of R. typhi in fleas was found during the present study. Factors contributing to the absence of R. typhi in these cat fleas in contrast to its presence in cat fleas from Orange and Los Angeles Counties are unknown and need to be investigated further in San Bernardino County.

Comments

This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Recommended Citation

Abramowicz, Kyle F., J. W. Wekesa, C. N. Nwadike, Maria L. Zambrano, Sandor E. Karpathy, D. Cecil, J. Burns, R. Hu, Marina E. Eremeeva. 2012. "Rickettsia felis in Cat Fleas, Ctenocephalides felis Parasitizing Opossums, San Bernardino County, California." Medical and Veterinary Entomology, 26 (4): 458-462. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2915.2012.01017.x source: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2915.2012.01017.x
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/environ-health-facpubs/56