Flinders Island Spotted Fever Rickettsioses Caused by “marmionii” Strain of Rickettsia honei, Eastern Australia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Australia has 4 rickettsial diseases: murine typhus, Queensland tick typhus, Flinders Island spotted fever, and scrub typhus.We describe 7 cases of a rickettsiosis with an acute onset and symptoms of fever (100%), headache (71%), arthralgia (43%), myalgia (43%), cough (43%), maculopapular/petechial rash (43%), nausea (29%), pharyngitis (29%), lymphadenopathy (29%), and eschar (29%).Cases were most prevalent in autumn and from eastern Australia, including Queensland, Tasmania, and South Australia.One patient had a history of tick bite (Haemaphysalis novaeguineae).An isolate shared 99.2%, 99.8%, 99.8%, 99.9%, and 100% homology with the 17 kDa, ompA, gltA, 16S rRNA, and Sca4 genes, respectively, of Rickettsia honei.This Australian rickettsiosis has similar symptoms to Flinders Island spotted fever, and the strain is genetically related to R. honei.It has been designated the "marmionii" strain of R. honei, in honor of Australian physician and scientist Barrie Marmion.A ustralia has several endemic rickettsial diseases.In addition, epidemic typhus arrived with the first fleet in 1788 (1), but the disease did not become established in Australia.The current endemic rickettsial diseases are murine typhus (Rickettsia typhi), scrub typhus (Orientia tsutsugamushi), and the spotted fever group (SFG) diseases-Queensland tick typhus (QTT; R. australis) and Flinders Island spotted fever (FISF; R. honei) (2).QTT, first described in 1946, was characterized as a relatively mild disease with symptoms of fever, headache, malaise, enlarged lymph nodes, and a maculopapular (sometimes vesicular) rash.Most patients have an eschar and some have a slight cough, myalgia, and chills (3,4).Cases of QTT have been detected only on the eastern seaboard of mainland Australia, with most originating in late winter (5).FISF was described in Australia, in 1991.It is found in southeastern Australia and is characterized by fever, headache, myalgia, transient arthralgia, maculopapular rash, and cough in some cases (6,7).Most cases occur in summer.Both QTT and FISF are transmitted to humans by tick bites.Ticks of the genus Ixodes, especially I. holocyclus, are the main arthropod hosts of QTT and Bothriocroton hydrosauri (formerly Aponomma hydrosauri) are the main hosts of FISF (8-10).We describe 7 cases of a rickettsial disease similar to FISF, which occurred in the eastern half of Australia.The etiologic agent of this disease is an SFG rickettsia, genetically related to R. honei and less closely related to R. australis.The etiologic agent of the rickettsiosis has been designated the "marmionii" strain of R. honei.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".