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Background: Severe fever and thrombocytopenia bunyavirus (SFTSV) infection causes severe fever and thrombocytopenia syndrome with high mortality. It is extremely rare that a transmitting tick can be directly captured in bite wounds, and that SFTSV can be isolated from both the captured tick and patient's serum to establish a solid pathogen diagnosis., Case Presentation: We report a case infected with severe fever and thrombocytopenia bunyavirus. The 69-year-old male patient presented with fever and tenderness on two lymph nodes in the right groin. A visible tick bite mark appeared on right upper quadrant of the patient's abdomen, and a live tick was captured in the bite wound upon physical examination. The virus was detected in both the blood of the patient and in the tick that stayed in the bite wound for 7 days. The phylogenetic analysis indicated that the SFTSV isolated from the tick and the patient's serum sample belonged to type B, in which the L/S segment of these two isolates shared 100% homology, while the M segment had 99.9% homology. The bitten patient was given various supportive care, but eventually died of multiple organ failure., Conclusion: The present case provides strong evidence of SFTSV transmission from H. longicornis to humans, and suggests that direct cross-species transmission can occur without additional intermediate hosts.

We report here a clinical and molecular study on a case suffer from severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) due to a new type of bunyavirus, named SFTS bunyavirus (SFTSV), in Zhejiang Province China. The key clinical features of this patient include fever, lymphocytopenia and thrombocytopenia. We carried out a serological and molecular investigation in the indicated case and on relatives with close contact. The SFTSV infection was confirmed through amplification of viral genetic material using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) from the patient's serum, but not relatives with close contact. Subsequently direct sequence of PCR product demonstrated a homology of 94-96% in the nucleotide sequence compared to a reference sequence previously reported, in which the majority of patients originated from an epidemic area of Central and Northeast China. Our results suggest that SFTSV can occur in a non-epidemic area due to a similar strain of SFTSV that apparently affect the blood system, implying the importance of dissecting the pathogenesis of SFTS as well as mode of infection.