Occurrence and Genotyping of in Hedgehogs in China.

is the causative agent of query fever (Q fever), and distributes broadly in environment. Livestock are identified as main reservoirs, which may infect people through their contaminative urine, feces, milk, and birth products. Wild animals can also be the potential carriers and transmitters of . To understand the geographic distribution and host species of in China, we investigated the prevalence of in hedgehogs () in Hubei Province. Hedgehogs were tested for with PCR targeting three genes (, , and ) followed by multispacer sequence typing (MST). We found that 12.2% (5/41) hedgehogs were PCR positive for . MST revealed presence of two novel genotypes and phylogenetic analysis revealed that the strains were similar to a group of isolates from chronic Q fever patients and mammals. This study showed that are highly prevalent in hedgehogs in Hubei Province in central China, suggesting that hedgehogs may play an important role in the ecology and transmission of to humans because it is captured and used as traditional medicine in China.