Human Exposure to Tickborne Relapsing Fever SpirocheteBorreliamiyamotoi, the Netherlands

High seroprevalence of Borrelia miyamotoi antibodies in forestry workers and individuals suspected of human granulocytic anaplasmosis in the Netherlands

“…and B. miyamotoi 11,14. Whether co-infection with B. miyamotoi exists and may alter the clinical manifestations of LB or LNB remains to be answered, our serological evidence suggest that it can occur in the same patients, assuming that patients were diagnosed correctly.…”

Borrelia miyamotoi: a widespread tick-borne relapsing fever spirochete

“…The fact that larvae can be infected with B. miyamotoi raises the question of whether larvae are able to transmit the pathogen to humans. Under optimal trial conditions, only 30-50% of larvae were found to feed on human test subjects [54], and only a small proportion of identified ticks feeding on humans were larvae [24,27,55]. Moreover, when humans do get bitten by B. miyamotoi infected larvae, it is currently unknown whether transmission can occur.…”

“…Indeed, in the Netherlands alone, each year an estimated 36 000 humans are bitten by ticks that were infected with Borrelia miyamotoi, compared with 183 000 estimated to be bitten by ticks infected with B. burgdorferi s.l. [27]. Although there is considerable exposure of humans to B. miyamotoi-infected ticks, it is unknown how often this exposure leads to infection, in part due to the lack of knowledge on B. miyamotoi transmission dynamics.…”

“…Sites and studies were excluded if a PCR was performed only in culture and/or direct fluorescence assay-positive ticks, and if accurate establishment of prevalence was impossible due to a bias (i.e., only some of the B. burgdorferi s.l.-positive ticks were tested for B. miyamotoi) or lack of clarification (i.e., the total sampled tick population was unknown or no distinction was made between host-derived and questing ticks). Data were collected from[12,14,[21][22][23][24][25]27,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35]37,38,40,[42][43][44][45].…”

Borrelia miyamotoiandCandidatusNeoehrlichia mikurensis inIxodes ricinusTicks, Romania

“…ticks in many countries in Europe and in North America and Asia. In Russia, the United States, and recently in the Netherlands, B. miyamotoi was detected in humans and confirmed to cause disease ( 4 , 5 ). In Romania, pathogens that cause Lyme borreliosis and reptile-associated borreliae were identified in different tick populations ( 6 , 7 ).…”