Many patients with<unk>  who live in areas with a high number of infections <unk> and the West Indies) do not visit a doctor, as most patients only have mild symptoms. This disease can, however, cause more serious symptoms in travelers who have never been exposed to the Rickettsia<unk>  bacterium before and are not immune. Travelers who present to a doctor after a trip to affected areas can be hard to diagnose, as many tropical diseases cause a fever similar to that of<unk> . Other diseases that may look similar are malaria, dengue fever, tuberculosis, acute HIV and respiratory infections. In addition to questions about symptoms, doctors will ask patients for an accurate travel history and whether he/she was near animals or ticks. Microbiological tests are available for doctors, but are expensive and often must be done by special laboratories. The antibiotic treatment available for rickettsiae infections has very few side effects, so if a doctor has a high suspicion of the disease, he or she may simply treat without doing more laboratory tests. Blood tests Diagnosis of<unk>  is mostly based on symptoms, as many laboratory tests are not specific for<unk> . Common laboratory test signs of<unk>  are a low white blood cell count (lymphopenia) and low platelet count (thrombocytopenia), a high C-reactive protein, and mildly high liver function tests. Microbiological tests Biopsies or cultures of a person's tick wound (eschar) are used to diagnose<unk> . However, this requires special culture media and can only be done by a laboratory with biohazard protection. There are more specialized laboratory tests available that use quantitative polymerase chain reactions (qPCR), but can only be done by laboratories with special equipment. Immunofluorescence assays can also be used, but are hard to interpret because of cross-reactions with other rickettsiae bacteria.
African tick bite fever
American tick bite fever
Rat-bite fever
Spondweni fever
Scabies
Colorado tick fever
Sandfly fever
Pacific Coast tick fever