We report acute tetraplegia caused by rat bite fever in a 59-year old man (snake keeper) and transmission of Streptobacillus moniliformis. We found an identical characteristic bacterial pattern in rat and human samples, which validated genotyping-based evidence for infection with the same strain, and identified diagnostic difficulties concerning infection with this microorganism.
Keywords: France; PCR; Streptobacillus moniliformis; acute tetraplegia; bacteria; multilocus variant analysis; rat bite fever; rats; reptiles; snake keeper; snakes; species specificity; transmission; variable number tandem repeat analysis; zoonoses.