Putative Pathogenic Genes of Leptospira interrogans and Leptospira weilii Isolated from Patients with Acute Febrile Illness.

Leptospirosis is an important worldwide tropical disease caused by pathogenic spp. The determination of virulence genes is important, as it influences patients' clinical manifestations and clinical outcomes. This case report focused on detecting the pathogenic genes of in association with the clinical manifestations of patients at the Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia, who presented with acute febrile illness. Two cases were found and, to the best of our knowledge, these were the first two cases in Malaysia in which patients presented with febrile illness were associated with successful isolation from clinical samples. Both clinical isolates were identified by 16S rRNA sequencing as and , respectively, and they were classified as pathogenic by the presence of different pathogenic genes, based on a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of targeted genes. This report emphasizes that different infecting species and the presence of different virulence factors cause a slight difference in clinical manifestations and laboratory findings of leptospirosis. Genomic sequencing and annotation revealed the detection of classical leptospiral virulence factor genes that were otherwise missed using PCR for detection of genome B208.