Ehrlichiosis Differential Diagnoses

Updated: Jun 22, 2021
  • Author: Chinelo N Animalu, MD, MPH, FIDSA; Chief Editor: Michael Stuart Bronze, MD  more...
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Diagnostic Considerations

Ehrlichiosis should be diagnosed based on clinical and epidemiological findings. It can later be confirmed using specialized confirmatory laboratory tests. Treatment should be initiated immediately pending the receipt of laboratory test results.

Ehrlichiosis is a difficult infectious disease to diagnose because it manifests as an acute, undifferentiated, febrile, RMSF-like illness with few or no physical findings. Most patients who are diagnosed with RMSF without rash probably have ehrlichiosis. Co-infections of various tick-borne pathogens transmitted by the same vector are rare, but they do occur.

Ehrlichiosis has the same distribution as RMSF and is transmitted by the same tick species (eg, Amblyomma, Dermacentor). However, RMSF causes physical findings that ehrlichiosis does not, including bilateral periorbital edema, edema of the dorsum of the hands and feet, and conjunctival suffusion. The maculopapular/petechial rash of RMSF on the wrists/ankles is usually absent in ehrlichiosis.

Laboratory findings associated with RMSF and ehrlichiosis are similar (eg, thrombocytopenia, relative lymphopenia, increased levels of serum transaminases, atypical lymphocytes). However, neutropenia is more common in ehrlichiosis than in RMSF.

Most patients with ehrlichiosis present with fever and a severe headache. Nuchal rigidity may occur but it is not common. The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) profile in patients with ehrlichiosis is mostly within normal limits but lymphocytic pleocytosis as well as elevated protein has occured in a few patients. [14]

Other differential diagnostic possibilities include typhoid fever, malaria, and babesiosis. All of these infectious diseases manifest as acute, undifferentiated, febrile illnesses with a paucity of physical signs. The diagnosis of typhoid fever and malaria are suggested by an appropriate epidemiologic profile and/or travel history. Exposure to large Dermacentor ticks would suggest RMSF, whereas exposure to small Ixodes ticks would suggest the possibility of babesiosis.

Other diseases that share clinical and laboratory findings of ehrlichial disease, particularly in patients with rash, include meningococcemia, toxic shock syndrome, murine typhus, Q fever, typhoid fever, leptospirosis, hepatitis, enteroviral infection, influenza, bacterial sepsis, endocarditis, and Kawasaki disease.

If a history of tick bite and outdoor activities exist with these symptoms, the physician should consider other tickborne febrile illnesses such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, relapsing fever, tularemia, Lyme borreliosis, Colorado tick fever, and babesiosis.

Differential Diagnoses