Roseomonas sp. Isolated from Ticks, China

摘要

To the Editor: Roseomonas, which produces pink colonies, is a newly described genus of gram-neg-ative bacteria (1). Human infections with Roseomonas spp. have been re-ported in the past decade, mostly in immunocompromised persons with underlying diseases such as acute leukemia, cancer, and rheumatoid ar-thritis (2–5). A healthy woman was re-ported to be infected by R. gilardii af-ter being bitten by a spider (6), which indicated possible transmission by an arthropod.As a part of an investigation of tick-borne diseases, we collected actively questing and feeding ticks in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, People's Repub-lic of China, in the summers of 2007 and 2008 (7). Ticks were washed in 75% ethanol, 30% hydrogen peroxide, and sterile distilled water. Five ticks of the same species, sex, and develop-mental stage were pooled and ground in 1 mL of saline. A 0.1-mL suspen-sion was placed on cysteine heart agar plates containing chocolate and 9% sheep blood (Becton Dickinson Micro-biology Systems, Cockeysville, MD, USA) and supplemented with colistin, amphotericin, lincomycin, trimetho-prim, and ampicillin. Eggs laid by en-gorged female ticks were collected and kept at room temperature