Objectives:Q fever has been reported worldwide; however, there was almost no official report of Q fever in Korea. In this study, we describe the current status of human Q fever occurrence in Korea.Methods:Demographic data of Q fever patients were collected from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System from 2006 to 2011. Case investigation reports from regional public health departments were used for additional information, like risk factors and clinical manifestation, of the patients since 2008.Results:There were 65 serologically confirmed cases during the study period. The annual notification rate of Q fever was 0.22 cases per million persons. The majority of cases were men (87.7%), adults (98.5%), and urban inhabitants (67.7%). Relevant exposures to risk factors were identified in 45.7% of patients. The most common symptoms of acute Q fever were fever (89.3%), myalgia (67.9%) and asthenia (53.6%). Two cases with endocarditis were identified in chronic Q fever.Conclusion:This study suggests that Q fever has a low endemicity in Korea. However, management and research at national level is required for prevention of a future epidemic.

ObjectivesBrucellosis is one of the most common zoonoses in the world, and occurs mainly in farmers, slaughterhouse workers, and veterinarians via direct or indirect contact with infected animals or their products. The clinical symptoms of human brucellosis are nonspecific, such as fever, headache, chills, and sweating. Diagnosis and treatment of brucellosis requires laboratory tests. Although the serum tube agglutination test (SAT) is the standardized gold method, it is laborious, time consuming, and requires a number of reagents. A microagglutination test (MAT) variant of the SAT or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is recommended for serological diagnoses. For the simple and rapid diagnosis of brucellosis, the MAT was standardized using samples for the SAT to define positive and negative categories, and we then compared the sensitivity and specificity of the MAT and ELISA.MethodsThirty SAT-positive sera and 60 SAT-negative sera were used in this study. Antibody titers of ≥1:160 were considered positive readings in both the SAT and MAT. Brucella abortus antigens and Brucella-positive control antiserum were used in the SAT and MAT. ELISAs of IgM and IgG were performed according to the manufacturers’ instructions.ResultsThe titers of the MAT differed according to antigen concentration. The optimal concentration of B abortus antigen was determined to compare the sensitivity and specificity between the MAT and SAT. The sensitivity and specificity of the MAT were 93.3% and 96.7%, respectively, for IgG with reference to ELISA, and 96.7% and 98.3%, respectively, for IgM.ConclusionsThe optimal concentration of antigen for the MAT was 1:10. The MAT is less time consuming and requires less antigen and serum than the SAT. The results of the MAT showed good agreement with those of ELISA. The results of this study suggest that the MAT could be useful for diagnosis of brucellosis.

We report 17 patients with human granulocytic anaplasmosis between January 2015 and September 2018 at two tertiary university hospitals in Korea. Monthly incidence peaked in May and June. Among these patients, we identified three who were co-infected with scrub typhus, and one patient with hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome.

ObjectivesBrucellosis is the most common bacterial zoonosis in the world. Multilocus variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR) analysis (MLVA) is a molecular method for genotyping bacterial species. Brucella abortus biovar I was isolated from most of the brucellosis-suspected patients in Korea. This study was conducted to investigate the ability of various MLVA primers that are used for molecular typing B. abortus isolates and for analyzing their epidemiological data.MethodsA total of 80 human isolates of B. abortus biovar I isolated from human patients and the reference strain were used for MLVA. Genetic diversity was determined by calculating the Simpson's diversity index (DI) of each VNTR locus. The Brucella strains were subcultured 30 times to determine the stability of each locus. The DNA of the strains cultivated in each passage was extracted and subjected to MLVA for further investigation.ResultsThe 15 VNTR loci were selected based on high DI values. The DIs of the 15 VNTR loci showed considerable discrimination power ranging from 59% for Bruce 43 to 87% for Bruce 22. Bruce 09, Bruce 11, Bruce 16, Bruce 42, and Bruce 43 were confirmed to remain stable in vitro among the 15 VNTR loci selected.ConclusionThe results of this study suggest that the five loci subsets may be a useful epidemiological tool for investigating B. abortus biovar 1 outbreak.