Alkhurma hemorrhagic fever in travelers returning from Egypt, 2010 // 10-1092.pdf (Objeto application/pdf)

DOI: 10.3201/eid1612101092
Suggested citation for this article: Carletti F, Castilletti C, Di Caro A, Capobianchi MR, Nisii C, Suter F, et al. Alkhurma hemorrhagic fever in travelers returning from Egypt, 2010. Emerg Infect Dis. 2010 Dec; [Epub ahead of print]
Alkhurma Hemorrhagic Fever in Travelers Returning from Egypt, 2010

Fabrizio Carletti, Concetta Castilletti, Antonino Di Caro, Maria R. Capobianchi, Carla Nisii, Fredy Suter, Marco Rizzi, Alessandra Tebaldi, Antonio Goglio, Cristiana Passerini Tosi, and Giuseppe Ippolito

Author affiliations: “Lazzaro Spallanzani” National Institute for Infectious Diseases, Rome, Italy (F. Carletti, C. Castilletti, A. Di Caro, M.R. Capobianchi, C. Nisii, G. Ippolito); and “Ospedali Riuniti di Bergamo,” Bergamo, Italy (F. Suter, M. Rizzi, A. Tebaldi, A. Goglio, C.P. Tosi)

Two travelers returning to Italy from southern Egypt were hospitalized with a fever of unknown origin. Test results showed infection with Alkhurma virus. The geographic distribution of this virus could be broader than previously thought.
Alkhurma virus (ALKV) is a recently described member of the tick-borne hemorrhagic fever group of the genus Flavivirus. It was initially isolated in the late 1990s (1,2) and is today considered a variant of the Kyasanur Forest disease virus, sharing 89% nt sequence homology (3,4). This emerging pathogen causes signs and symptoms such as fever, headache, joint pain, muscle pain, vomiting, and thrombocytopenia; severe cases may have hemorrhagic manifestations (epistaxis, ecchymoses, petechiae, hematemesis) and encephalitis, which can result in death (reported case-fatality rate as high as 25%) (5–8). Camels and sheep are thought to be the natural hosts of ALKV, but whether other mammals are also involved in its life cycle remains unknown. ALKV RNA was recently detected in an Ornithodoros savignyi tick collected near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (9); on the Arabian Peninsula, these ticks have been associated with camels and their resting places and can be found where cases of ALKV infection in humans have

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