Surveys of rodent-borne disease in Thailand with a focus on scrub typhus assessment.

The epidemiology of many rodent-borne diseases in South-East Asia remains ill-defined. Scrub typhus and lep-tospirosis are common and medically significant, while other zoonotic diseases, such as spotted fever group Rickettsiae have been identified, but their overall medical significance is unknown. Rodent surveillance was conducted from June 2002 to July 2004 in 18 provinces from Thailand.

Comparison of immune response against Orientia tsutsugamushi, a causative agent of scrub typhus, in 4-week-old and 10-week-old scrub typhus-infected laboratory mice using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay technique.

Using the indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique, we compared the immune response of specific antibodies (IgM and IgG) in serum samples of scrub typhus-infected and non-infected mice against Orientia sutsugamushi (a causative agent of scrub typhus). Two different age groups (4-week-old and 10-week-old) of ICR laboratory mice were infected with O. tsutsugamushi by the animal passage procedure.

Prevalence and diversity of Bartonella in rodents of northern Thailand: a comparison with Bartonella in rodents from southern China.

We report results of the first study to investigate the distribution and diversity of Bartonella in rodents from Thailand. Whole blood from 195 rodents, representing six species, was tested for the presence of Bartonella species using standard culture techniques. Isolates were obtained from 17 (8.

Development of an in vitro method for the evaluation of candidate repellents against Leptotrombidium (Acari: Trombiculidae) chiggers.

We developed a rapid and economical in vitro procedure with which to evaluate the efficacy of candidate repellents against chiggers. The procedure requires only 5 min and a small number of chiggers to obtain a valid estimate of the median effective dose. We used this procedure to evaluate the repellent activity of 11 compounds against the chigger, Leptotrombidium imphalum Vercammen-Grandjean and Langston.