Novel genotypes of serogroup Sejroe isolated from human patients in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan.

Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease caused by pathogenic spirochetes of species. It is a public health issue in the tropics, including Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan. This study reports the first isolation of serogroup Sejroe from two human patients in Japan, and describes its molecular characterization using multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA).