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Background: is a rare pathogen, mostly affecting young adults, causing infections of the head and neck, typically described as the Lemierre’s syndrome. Today this symptom complex has become increasingly rare and has almost turned to a ‘forgotten disease’. Methods: We performed a retrospective, descriptive study to identify the clinical features of patients with positive culture of . Additionally, the antibiotic susceptibility profile of the pathogens was analysed.Results: During a period of 22 years 36 patients with at least one isolate of were identified. Mostly tonsillar and peritonsillar abscesses were found, 10 patients were identified with bacteraemia, but only 4 patients presented with symptoms like sore throat, fever and swollen cervical lymph nodes, which may suggest Lemierre’s. Most of the isolates (33/35) showed sensitivity to all tested antibiotics.Conclusion: Appropriate techniques are needed to detect , especially from throat swabs, in the microbiological laboratory. Current clinical and microbiological practice may lead to under-diagnosis of infections caused by . Further research is needed to define the colonization rate and to optimize methods for detection as well as identification of virulence.

Tularemia is a highly pathogenic zoonosis caused by the gram-negative intracellular bacterium Francisella tularensis (1). F. tularensis subspecies tularensis (type A) and holarctica (type B) are the main causative agents [...]

During cutaneous tick attachment, the feeding cavity becomes a site of transmission for tick salivary compounds and tick-borne pathogens. However, the immunological consequences of tick feeding for human skin remain unclear. Here, we assessed human skin and blood samples upon tick bite and developed a human skin explant model mimicking Ixodes ricinus bites and tick-borne pathogen infection. Following tick attachment, we observed rapidly occurring patterns of immunomodulation, including increases in neutrophils and cutaneous B and T cells. T cells upregulated tissue residency markers, while lymphocytic cytokine production was impaired. In early stages of Borrelia burgdorferi model infections, we detected strain-specific immune responses and close spatial relationships between macrophages and spirochetes. Preincubation of spirochetes with tick salivary gland extracts hampered accumulation of immune cells and increased spirochete loads. Collectively, we showed that tick feeding exerts profound changes on the skin immune network that interfere with the primary response against tick-borne pathogens., Introduction Ticks are hematophagous ectoparasites, with the skin representing the main interface of host-vector interaction that may become the site of tick-borne pathogen transmission. Steadily increasing tick prevalence has been [...]