These four patients had not identified at-risk occupational history and experienced fever, debility and joint pains. Trace-back of a laboratory-acquired Brucella infection We report a case of brucellosis affecting a hospital microbiology U0126 purchase laboratory technician in Beijing, a non-endemic area of China. To better elucidate the origin of such infection, Brucella

strains from both the patient and the laboratory technician were characterized by MLVA-16. The strain BJ06-10 showed the same MLVA type with strain NM06-11 isolated from a patient with acute brucellosis who engaged in fur-making in Inner Mongolia. Identification of the B. melitensis Tariquidar mouse vaccine strain M5 LB10-01, a B. melitensis biovar 1 strain isolated from Guangdong in 2010 was indistinguishable from the vaccine strain M5 according to the MLVA cluster analysis (MLVA027: 1-5-3-13-2-2-3-2-4-20-8-6-4-3-7-5).

This is unexpected since the vaccine strain M5 was not used in Guangdong. Detection of a strain with phenotypic and genotypic properties indistinguishable from the vaccine strain M5 raises the concern of the origin of the wild type strain. Discussion Brucellosis surveillance was started in 1980 in some parts of China. In 2008, 21 surveillance points for animal and human brucellosis were established in the 19 provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, Henan, Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Tibet, Gansu, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Shanxi, Shan’xi, Zhejiang, Liaoning, Ningxia and Yunnan. Since the established of these surveillance points more than 30 years ago, a huge panel of animals and humans strains have been surveyed. It is significant AZD8931 order that the national epidemiological characteristics can be analyzed. It suggests that B. melitensis isolates from different locations and years would reflect the epidemic features of human brucellosis. Sheep infected with Brucella PTK6 are one of the main sources for human and animal brucellosis in China [9]. Over the last 20 years, the geographic distribution of brucellosis in China had been changing from pasturing

areas to regions of with reduced agricultural interests (or alternatively more industrial concentrations); in these areas the infection rates, reported incidence, and number of outbreaks of brucellosis have increased markedly based on the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System data. During this period, the cases have mostly been reported from Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Shan’xi provinces. It is worth noting that brucellosis is endemic in Guangdong province, one of the wealthiest and industrial provinces in China. This is because of the movement of infected animal to Guangdong, resulting in the change of the geographic distribution of brucellosis. In the different epidemic regions of China, the predominant strains have been shown to be B.