Abstract
Bartonella henselae is a fastidious Gram-negative bacterial pathogen of cats that may cause lethal human infection (Regnery et al., 1992; Welch et al., 1992), and is the only microbial pathogen shown to directly mediate reversible angiogenesis in human cells (Kempf et al., 2001).
The epidemiology is complex and while it may cause severe illness in the immune competent host, some infections appear to be relatively benign. 16S rDNA typing suggests two distinct lineages corresponding to serotype. The Marseille serotype corresponds to 16S type II (Drancourt et al., 1996; La Scola et al., 2002), and may also be distinguished from the type strain (Houston serotype) by protein profile (Iredell et al., 2002; La Scola et al., 2002), and by single- and multilocus DNA typing schemes (Birtles & Raoult, 1996; Iredell et al., 2003; Zeaiter et al., 2002a, b).