Transmission cycle of murine typhus in Greece.

A field study, based on a follow up of the 49 human cases of the disease that occurred on the island of Evia in 1985, has established the transmission cycle of murine typhus in Greece for the first time. In 1993, two types of traps were used to catch 53 rats, all of them Rattus norvegicus, in the localities where the cases had occurred. Some 300 fleas, all of them probably Xenopsylla cheopis, and a few ticks and mites were collected from the rats.