Authors
Pierre Couppié,
1,2 Romain Blaizot,1,2 Camilla J. Velvin,3 Maylis Douine,2,4 Marine Combe,3 Mathieu Nacher,2,4 and Rodolphe E. Gozlan3.
Affiliations
1 Service de dermatologie, Cayenne Hospital, Cayenne Cedex, French Guiana
2 Université de Guyane, EA3593 Ecosystèmes Amazoniens et Pathologie Tropicale, Cayenne, French Guiana
Abstract
M. ulcerans infections (Buruli ulcer; BU) have been reported in French Guiana since the 1960s [1]. It is striking to see that French Guiana concentrates most of the cases of BU in America with only a few cases reported in Suriname, Peru, Mexico and Bolivia in the past [2, 3]. Either BU is underdiagnosed and underreported in most of the continent; or the specific environmental conditions in French Guiana represent a unique niche for the disease to appear; or a sublineage of M. ulcerans has established in French Guiana that has a higher virulence than other members of the ancestral lineage found in the Americas.
