Genetic diversity of Bartonella quintana in macaques suggests zoonotic origin of trench fever

Abstract

Bartonella quintana is a bacterium that causes a broad spectrum of diseases in humans including trench fever. Humans were previously considered to be the primary, if not the only, reservoir hosts for B.quintana. To identify the animal reservoir and extend our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary history of B.quintana, we examined blood samples from macaques and performed multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis. We demonstrated the prevalence of B.quintana infection was common in macaques from main primate centres in mainland China. Overall, 18.0% (59/328) of rhesus macaques and 12.7% (39/308) of cynomolgus macaques were found to be infected with B.quintana by blood culture and/or polymerase chain reaction. The infection was more frequently identified in juvenile and young monkeys compared with adult animals. In contrast with the relatively low level of sequence divergence of B.quintana reported in humans, our investigation revealed much higher genetic diversity in nonhuman primates. We identified 44 new nucleotide variable sites and 14 novel sequence types (STs) among the B.quintana isolates by MLST analysis. Some STs were found only in cynomolgus macaques, while some others were detected only in rhesus macaques, suggesting evidence of host-cospeciation, which were further confirmed by phylogenetic analysis and Splits decomposition analysis. Our findings suggest that trench fever may primarily be a zoonotic disease with macaques as the natural hosts.