ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Scrub typhus is a chigger-borne zoonosis that is of greatest public health importance in tropical rural Asia. Humans are accidental hosts who acquire the disease by intruding into often sharply localized foci colonized by infected larval trombiculid mites, popularly known as chiggers. Orientia tsutsugamushi, the causative agent, is an obligate intracellular bacterium that was recently reclassified from the genus Rickettsia into a separate genus because it differs from rickettsiae in genetic composition, cell wall structure, and multiplication cycle (1).
