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No serological evidence of Rickettsia helvetica infection in Scandinavian sarcoidosis patients

¹ Dept of Medicine, Division of Respiratory Medicine, Karolinska Hospital, ² Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control, and ³ Microbiology and Tumour Biology Centre, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

CORRESPONDENCE: A. Planck, Dept of Medicine, KSS, S-541 85, Skövde, Sweden. Fax: 46 500432554. E-mail: anders.planck@vgregion.se

Keywords: Antibody, bacteria, infection, Rickettsia helvetica, sarcoidosis

Received: February 4, 2004
Accepted June 13, 2004

This study was supported by the King Oscar II Jubilee foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the Karolinska Institutet. Purified R. helvetica antigen was kindly provided by D. Raoult (Unité des Rickettsies, Faculté de Medecine, Marseille, France). R. conorii and R. typhi antigens were a gift from M.G. Peacock (Rocky Mountain Laboratories, Hamilton, MT, USA).

Many agents have been suggested to elicit sarcoidosis, and, recently, an association was presented between this disease and the bacterium Rickettsia helvetica.

The aim of this study was to investigate if serological support for such an association could be detected.

Sera from 20 well-characterised sarcoidosis patients were investigated for anti-rickettsial immunoglobulin G antibodies with a micro-immunofluorescence technique. R. helvetica, R. conorii and R. typhi served as antigens.

In conclusion, none of the investigated sera displayed detectable titres of anti-rickettsial immunoglobulin G antibodies. Thus, the current study does not support an association between rickettsia and sarcoidosis.

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