Pathogenic New World Relapsing Fever Borrelia in a Myotis Bat, Eastern China, 2015

Abstract

Yanase T. Characterization of genome segments 2, 3 and 6 of epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus strains isolated in

Human-pathogenic relapsing fever Borrelia found in bats from Central China phylogenetically clustered together with relapsing fever borreliae reported in the New World

“…For Borrelia-positive Rh. pusillus (bat ID: XN788), sequence query showed that the 8 housekeeping genes were exactly the same as ST927, which was previously reported by our team in a Myotis ricketti bat from Shandong Province, China [14]. For Borrelia-positive My.…”

“…davidii (bat ID: XN888), the 8 loci of MLST were all novel alleles, and the 8 loci were submitted to the Borrelia MLST database and novel allele numbers were assigned: clpA (303), clpX (263), nifS (238), pepX (267), pyrG (278), recG (294), rplB (256), and uvrA (270), and sequence typing was assigned as ST938. Phylogenetic analysis based on the concatenated 8 housekeeping genes (4,776 bp, in the order of clpA - clpX - nifS - pepX - pyrG - recG - rplB - uvrA ) revealed that the Borrelia species found in bats from this study clustered with a group of human pathogenic relapsing fever Borrelia spirochetes, and were most related to Candidatus Borrelia fainii, which was recently identified in a febrile patient, bats and soft ticks from Zambia [ 13 ], as well as in a bat from Shandong Province, China [ 14 ] ( Fig 3 ). Phylogenetic trees based on each of the 8 loci of relapsing fever Borrelia were shown in S1 – S8 Figs.…”

“…A recent study found that bats and bat soft ticks collected from a cave in Zambia showed a high infection rate for Candidatus Borrelia fainii, and proposed that bats and bat soft ticks contributed to the environmental cycle of Candidatus Borrelia fainii as hosts and vectors, respectively [ 13 ]. However, our previous study found that only one out of 145 bats collected from Shandong Province, China was infected with Candidatus Borrelia fainii [ 14 ]. In this study, only 2 out of 403 bats were found positive for Candidatus Borrelia fainii.…”

“…In this study, only 2 out of 403 bats were found positive for Candidatus Borrelia fainii. The Borrelia -positive bat species found in China in this study include Myotis ricketti in Shandong Province [ 14 ], Rhinolophus pusillus and Myotis davidii in Hubei Province of this study. Myotis ricketti is distributed in China, Vietnam and Laos, Rhinolophus pusillus can be found in Southern China, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, while Myotis davidii is endemic to China ( http://www.bio.bris.ac.uk/research/bats/China bats/ ).…”

“…It proposed that bats and bat soft ticks contributed to the environmental cycle of this Borrelia species as hosts and vectors, respectively [ 13 ]. Our group also found that one Myotis bat from Shandong Province in Eastern China was infected with Candidatus Borrelia fainii, as the first report of this novel relapsing fever Borrelia species in Asia [ 14 ]. Since only a single bat was found to be infected with the Borrelia species, the role of bats in the transmission of Borrelia cannot be determined in China.…”