1997 Volume 41 Issue 6 Pages 437-443
Orientia tsutsugamushi, the etiological agent of scrub typhus, is an antigenically diverse organism and many serologically distinct strains have been identified. The 56kDa protein of O. tsutsugamushi, a major protein in the outer membrane, has been thought to be responsible for this antigenic variability. A strain of O. tsutsugamushi isolated in Korea cross-reacted with both Gilliam strain-specific and Karp strain-specific monoclonal antibodies. When its 56kDa protein gene was cloned and analyzed, its sequence showed variation especially between 1, 200 and 1, 250bp, showing that this isolate is a new O. tsutsugamushi strain.