Bartonella (Rochalimaea) quintana Bacteremia in Inner-City Patients with Chronic Alcoholism

Background Bartonella (Rochalimaea) quintana is a fastidious gram-negative bacterium known to cause trench fever, cutaneous bacillary angiomatosis, and endocarditis. Between January and June 1993 in Seattle, we isolated B. quintana from 34 blood cultures obtained from 10 patients not known to be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Methods After identifying the isolates as B. quintana by direct immunofluorescence and DNA-hybridization studies, we determined strain hybridization with studies of restriction-fragment–length polymorphisms (RFLPs) of the intergenic spacer (noncoding) region of ribosomal DNA amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). To characterize the epidemiologic and clinical features of bartonella infections in these patients, we performed a retrospective case–control study using as controls 20 patients from whom blood was obtained for culture at approximately the same time as from the index patients. Results B. quintana isolates from the 10 patients were indistingu...