Objective:

Determine the frequency of infection and disease by Rickettsia spp. of the spotted fever group in febrile patients from Urabá Antioquia attended by hospital centers of the region.

Methods:

Patients from nine health institutions of the Urabá region were included in the study. These patients received a survey with questions about their clinical and socio-demographic variables. Eighty-nine acutephase serum samples, and 60 convalescent serum samples, were obtained from these patients, and each sample was tested (IgG) by Indirect Immunofluoerscence Assay (IIFA) using a dilution of 1:64 against R. rickettsii. Furtherly, positive sera were tittered by two-fold serial dilutions using the same antigen.

Results:

Patients showed symptoms such as fever, headache, jaundice, myalgias, nausea, abdominal pain, petechiae, thrombocytopenia and vomiting. Most of these patients came from rural areas (55,1 %). Seropositivity was obtained in 40,4 % patients with titers between 64-512, a 33,7 % with previous infection and the disease was found in 6 patients (6,7 %). Patients with seroconversion, or a fourlfold rise antibody titer between acute and convalescent samples, came from the municipalities of Apartadó (n = 2), Chigorodó (n = 1), Necoclí (n = 2) and Turbo (n = 1), and the most relevant clinical finding was thrombocytopenia in four of the patients.

Conclusions:

This study demonstrated that infection and rickettsial disease continues being active in the Urabá region. This situation represents a warning for the health authorities of the region and suggests them to provide appropriate treatment to avoid deaths or sequelae derived from this type of infections.

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