Author: Miladin Kostovic

# icterohaemorrhagiae

- `Genus:............ Leptospira`
- `Species:.......... interrogans`
- `Serogroup:........ Icterohaemorrhagiae`
- `Serovar:.......... icterohaemorrhagiae`
- `Strain:........... RGA`
- `Year:............. 1915`
- `Origin:........... Human`
- `Country:.......... Germany`

### History of serovar:

The designation RGA is an abbreviation of the Reichsgesundheisamt in Berlin, where the strain was first cultured in vitro.

During World War I, in November 1915, strain RGA was isolated by Uhlenhuth and Fromme through guinea-pig inoculation with blood from a soldier in Belgium. They considered it to be the aethological agent of Wiel's disease. In the original publication (Uhlenhuth and Fromme, 1916) the originism is described as Spirochaeta icterogenes. According to a letter of Borg-Petersen to the secretary of the TSC, dated January 1969, the infected guinea-pigs were sent to the Robert Koch Institue (Prof. Otto) and thence to the laboratory of the Reichsgesundheitsamt. There the strain was cultured in vivo in February 1916. The strain originally named "Berlin" and "original strain from Uhlenhuth and Fromme" was succesfully maintained and in 1924 a subculture was sent by Manteufel from the Reichsgesundheitsamt to Schuffner in Amsterdam (Institute of Tropical Hygiene) under the designation GA (Gipsen and Schuffner, 1939).

Strain RGA appeared already on the list of Wolff and Broom (1954) as the reference strain of serovar icterohaemorrhagiae and still did when the last WHO list was published in 1967 (WHO, Tech. Rep. No. 380, 1967). This was in accordance with the recommendations of the TSC at the meeting in Moscow in 1966, reading that, "the oldest surviving authentic strain, RGA should be accepted as the neotype strain of the species interrogans". This was approved again at the Manchester meeting of the TSC in 1986.

However after recognizing by the TSC (Osaka, 1990), the authenticity of the strain Ictero No. 1,they consequently decided to replace RGA by Ictero No. 1 as reference strain of the serovar and as a neotype strain of the species interrogans in spite of the serological difference between the two srains.

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