“Let’s do Bartonella next,” we said. “It’ll be straightforward and fun,” we promised ourselves. Turns out we were half right. In this fun but not quite straightforward episode, we tackle not one, not two, but three different species of Bartonella bacteria that can cause disease in humans: Bartonella bacilliformis (Carrión’s disease), B. quintana (trench fever), B. henselae (cat scratch disease). Essentially, we’re giving you three mini-turned-maxisodes for the price of one! For each pathogen, we review its surprisingly strange biology, take a brief tour of its history, and wrap up with a look at its current status across the globe, comparing and contrasting along the way. By the end of this ride, you’ll be bursting with Bartonella trivia, in awe of dental pulp, and scratching your head about the transmission of cat scratch fever.
| History | Biology |
| Alsmark, Cecilia M., et al. “The louse-borne human pathogen Bartonella quintana is a genomic derivative of the zoonotic agent Bartonella henselae.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101.26 (2004): 9716-9721. | Maguiña, C., Guerra, H. and Ventosilla, P., 2009. Bartonellosis. Clinics in dermatology, 27(3), pp.271-280. |
| Anstead, Gregory M. “The centenary of the discovery of trench fever, an emerging infectious disease of World War 1.” The Lancet Infectious Diseases 16.8 (2016): e164-e172. | Foucault, C., Brouqui, P. and Raoult, D., 2006. Bartonella quintana characteristics and clinical management. Emerging infectious diseases, 12(2), p.217. |
| Atenstaedt, Robert L. “Trench fever: the British medical response in the Great War.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 99.11 (2006): 564-568. | Ohl, M.E. and Spach, D.H., 2000. Bartonella quintana and urban trench fever. Clinical infectious diseases, 31(1), pp.131-135. |
| Ben-Tekaya, Houchaima, Jean-Pierre Gorvel, and Christoph Dehio. “Bartonella and Brucella—weapons and strategies for stealth attack.” Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine 3.8 (2013): a010231. | Kaiser, P.O., Riess, T., O’Rourke, F., Linke, D. and Kempf, V.A., 2011. Bartonella spp.: throwing light on uncommon human infections. International Journal of Medical Microbiology, 301(1), pp.7-15. |
| Buffet, Jean-Philippe, Michael Kosoy, and Muriel Vayssier-Taussat. “Natural history of Bartonella-infecting rodents in light of new knowledge on genomics, diversity and evolution.” Future Microbiology 8.9 (2013): 1117-1128. | Karem, K.L., Paddock, C.D. and Regnery, R.L., 2000. Bartonella henselae, B. quintana, and B. bacilliformis: historical pathogens of emerging significance. Microbes and Infection, 2(10), pp.1193-1205. |
| Carithers, Hugh A. “Cat-scratch disease: notes on its history.” American Journal of Diseases of Children 119.3 (1970): 200-203. | Gomes, C., Pons, M.J., del Valle Mendoza, J. and Ruiz, J., 2016. Carrion’s disease: an eradicable illness?. Infectious diseases of poverty, 5(1), pp.1-4. |
| Chomel, Bruno B., et al. “Bartonella spp. in pets and effect on human health.” Emerging infectious diseases 12.3 (2006): 389. | Mogollon-Pasapera, E., Otvos Jr, L., Giordano, A. and Cassone, M., 2009. Bartonella: emerging pathogen or emerging awareness?. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 13(1), pp.3-8. |
| Drancourt, Michel, et al. “Bartonella quintana in a 4000-year-old human tooth.” The Journal of infectious diseases 191.4 (2005): 607-611. | Álvarez-Fernández, A., Breitschwerdt, E.B. and Solano-Gallego, L., 2018. Bartonella infections in cats and dogs including zoonotic aspects. Parasites & vectors, 11(1), pp.1-21. |
| Florin, Todd A., Theoklis E. Zaoutis, and Lisa B. Zaoutis. “Beyond cat scratch disease: widening spectrum of Bartonella henselae infection.” Pediatrics 121.5 (2008): e1413-e1425. | Okaro, U., Addisu, A., Casanas, B. and Anderson, B., 2017. Bartonella species, an emerging cause of blood-culture-negative endocarditis. Clinical Microbiology Reviews, 30(3), pp.709-746. |
| Frank, Hannah K., Scott D. Boyd, and Elizabeth A. Hadly. “Global fingerprint of humans on the distribution of Bartonella bacteria in mammals.” PLoS neglected tropical diseases 12.11 (2018): e0006865. | Henriquez-Camacho, C., Ventosilla, P., Minnick, M.F., Ruiz, J. and Maguiña, C., 2015. Proteins of Bartonella bacilliformis: candidates for vaccine development. International journal of peptides, 2015. |
| Houpikian, Pierre, and Didier Raoult. “Molecular phylogeny of the genus Bartonella: what is the current knowledge?.” FEMS microbiology letters 200.1 (2001): 1-7. | Cheslock, M.A. and Embers, M.E., 2019. Human bartonellosis: an underappreciated public health problem?. Tropical medicine and infectious disease, 4(2), p.69. |
| Ihler, Garret M. “Bartonella bacilliformis: dangerous pathogen slowly emerging from deep background.” FEMS Microbiology Letters 144.1 (1996): 1-11. | |
| Karem, Kevin L., Christopher D. Paddock, and Russell L. Regnery. “Bartonella henselae, B. quintana, and B. bacilliformis: historical pathogens of emerging significance.” Microbes and Infection 2.10 (2000): 1193-1205. | |
| Vu Dang, La, et al. “Molecular detection of Bartonella henselae DNA in the dental pulp of 800-year-old French cats.” Clinical infectious diseases 39.9 (2004): 1391-1394. | |
| Lamps, Laura W., and Margie A. Scott. “Cat-scratch disease: historic, clinical, and pathologic perspectives.” Pathology Patterns Reviews 121.suppl_1 (2004): S71-S80. | |
| Li, Hao, et al. “Genetic diversity of Bartonella quintana in macaques suggests zoonotic origin of trench fever.” Molecular ecology 22.8 (2013): 2118-2127. | |
| Logan, J. S. “Trench fever in Belfast, and the nature of the ‘relapsing fevers’ in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century.” The Ulster medical journal 58.1 (1989): 83. | |
| Mai, Ba-Hoang-Anh, et al. “Five millennia of Bartonella quintana bacteraemia.” PloS one 15.11 (2020): e0239526. | |
| McKee, Clifton D., et al. “Bats are key hosts in the radiation of mammal-associated Bartonella bacteria.” Infection, Genetics and Evolution 89 (2021): 104719. | |
| McNee, J. W., and Arnold Renshaw. ““Trench fever”: a relapsing fever occurring with the British forces in France.” British Medical Journal 1.2876 (1916): 225. | |
| Pennington, Hugh. “The impact of infectious disease in war time: a look back at WW1.” (2019): 165-168. | |
| Firsthands: https://lochgelly.org.uk/2015/11/eye-witness-accounts-of-world-war-one/ Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. United States, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. |
Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, you won’t pay a penny more, but we’ll get a small commission which helps us keep things running. Thanks!
