author(s)
Ravi Teppawar, Archana Patil, Sandeep Chaudhari, Shilpshri Shinde and Sunil Kolte, Aashish Bhoyar and Vijay Gilche

abstract
Rodents are the natural reservoir and maintenance hosts for scrub typhus. In order to know the prevalence of scrub typhus; a total of 160 rodent samples (80 blood and 80 tissue samples) and 18 vector pools were processed. Of the 80 rodents captured based on external morphological features five different species viz; Rattus bandicot (30), Rattus Norvegicus (21), Mus musculus (05), Rattus rattus (15) and nine shrews (Suncus murinus) were recorded. Further DNA was extracted from rodent and vector samples and amplified by employing 56kDa and 47 kDa conventional and nested PCR. Of the 160 analysed rodent samples; no single sample was reported positive for 56kDa gene whereas; two blood and one tissue sample was reported positive for 47kDa gene. None of vectors were reported positive by 56kDa or 47kDa PCR. The geographical distribution of scrub typhus vectors and reservoir hosts are important aspects for understanding the epidemiology as well as the potential impacts of the disease on human health.