Scrub Typhus Disease Research Paper

Orientia tsutsugamushi bacterium, the causeitive agent of Scrub Typhus disease. The pathogen is spread by some species of the family of Trombiculid mites; there are four defined stages in the life cycle of the mites, the egg, larva, nymph and adult stage. The larval stage (Chigger mite) is the only this stage that feeds on a host, thus transferring the O. tsutsugamushi bacterium to the human host. Nymphal and adult Trombiculid mites live in the soil and feed on the eggs of insects. Humans are an accidental host of O. tsutsugamushi while rodents are another intermediate host and aides in transmission of the disease. Mites maintain the organisms by transovarian transmission as well by transtadial transmission through the mite’s life cycle. (1-4).
It is very difficult to determine the burden of the disease, because of the native terrain in which the hosts are found(5,6). This disease extends from northern Japan and far-eastern Russia in the north, to the territories around the Solomon Sea into northern Australia in the south, and to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the west(7). A precise incidence of the disease is unknown, as high burdened territories spans vast regions of equatorial jungle to the sub-tropics where diagnostic facilities are …show more content…
Orentia must be identified under microscopic trough permanent slicing techniques. Slice preparation reagents (permute) will destroy DNA for preventing further analysis of the chigger and Orientia genome. This precludes genetic determinations of infection rates and chigger species relationships. It is crucial to find new techniques for morphological identification of the chigger species that would preserve DNA for further molecular studies to identify Orientia infection and chigger genome sequences with the hope of finding the relationship between the pathogen, O. tsutsugamushi, and its Chigger Mite