Highlights

• Three years of data from Gorakhpur’s Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College has confirmed that the majority of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) patients admitted to the hospital between August and October each year have scrub typhus.
• This finding is important, given that scrub typhus can be treated easily if detected early.
• The first indication of scrub typhus’ role came during a 2014 study at BRD by researchers from Karnataka’s Manipal Centre for Viral Research.
• They found that the mites carried Orientia tsutsugumashi, the bacterium which causes scrub typhus. While this study was published in Vector Borne and Zoonotic Diseases in July 2018

Source: The Hindu