Tick-borne encephalitis virus, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, Borrelia miyamotoi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis in Ixodes ricinus ticks collected from recreational islands in southern Norway

Kjelland, Vivian; Paulsen, Katrine Mørk; Rollum, Rikke; Jenkins, Andrew; Stuen, Snorre; Soleng, Arnulf; Edgar, Kristin Skarsfjord; Lindstedt, Heidi Heggen; Vaino, Kirsti; Gibory, Moustafa; Andreassen, Åshild Kristine

doi:10.1016/j.ttbdis.2018.04.005

Cited by 29 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(54 reference statements)

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“…C. N. mikurensis seemed to co-occur with B. afzelii more frequently than expected under random co-occurrence. This higher-thanexpected prevalence has been found several times before for this particular pathogen combination (Andersson et al 2013;Glatz et al 2014;Kjelland et al 2018;Laaksonen et al 2018;Sormunen et al 2018), and the finding seems to be associated with wild rodents (especially with the bank vole, Myodes glareolus) that act as common reservoir hosts for both pathogens (Andersson and Råberg 2011;Andersson et al 2014).…”

Section: Tick-borne Pathogens In the Citymentioning

confidence: 52%

High tick abundance and diversity of tick-borne pathogens in a Finnish city

et al. 2019

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The sheep tick Ixodes ricinus is the primary vector for various zoonotic diseases, including Lyme borreliosis and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), in Europe. Because both abundance of ticks and prevalence of tick-borne pathogens in these organisms have increased in many locations and under different environments, we designed a study to survey the occurrence of ticks and pathogens in an urban area, namely, the city of Turku, in SW Finland. In summer 2017, we collected >700 ticks, primarily from city parks, suburban forest patches, and recreational areas. Comprehensive subsets of ticks were screened for presence of all common tick-borne pathogens. Half of the ticks carried at least one pathogen. The most common pathogens detected were the causative agents of Lyme borreliosis, i.e., bacteria belonging to the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato group. Their prevalence was 37% in nymphal and 47% in adult ticks, which are high in comparison with surveys conducted elsewhere in northern Europe. Similarly, Rickettsia spp. (primarily R. helvetica) were also detected in a relatively high proportion of the samples (11% of both nymphs and adults). The TBE virus was not found in a relatively small subsample, but we detected (albeit at a low prevalence of 0-6% of nymphs and adults) the bacterial pathogens Borrelia miyamotoi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis and the protozoan Babesia spp., which are also known agents of zoonotic diseases. The relatively high abundance of ticks and high diversity and overall prevalence of tick-borne pathogens suggest a lively and dense presence of mammalian and avian tick hosts in the city. Our results indicate a higher risk of encountering tick-borne pathogens in urbanized areas of southern Finland than previously known. Moreover, the possibility of acquiring tick-borne diseases from urban environments likely exists throughout most of Europe, and it should be acknowledged by health care professionals.

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Section: Tick-borne Pathogens In the Citymentioning

confidence: 52%

High tick abundance and diversity of tick-borne pathogens in a Finnish city

et al. 2019

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“…Although the prevalence of other tick‐borne pathogens in Norway is known to vary from place to place (Kjelland et al, ; Paulsen et al, ; Soleng et al, ; Soleng & Kjelland, ; Tveten, , ), we are not aware of any study showing such a clear and sharply delineated area of reduced prevalence. Borrelia afzelii and N. mikurensis have been found co‐infecting ticks with a higher prevalence than is expected by random chance (Andersson, Bartkova, Lindestad, & Raberg, ; Andersson, Scherman, & Raberg, ; Kjelland et al, ). Because of this association, it would be particularly interesting to investigate whether B. afzelii shows a similar distribution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…Cases of neoehrlichiosis have been reported in several European countries, including Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Norway (Dadgar, Grankvist, Wernbro, & Wennerås, ; Frivik, Noraas, Grankvist, Wennerås, & Quarsten, ; von Loewenich et al, ; Maurer et al, ; Pekova et al, ). Although only one case of neoehrlichiosis has been so far reported in Norway (Frivik et al, ), N. mikurensis is the second most frequent pathogen in I. ricinus after Borrelia afzelii (Jenkins et al, ; Kjelland et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Neoehrlichia mikurensis was first found in south‐eastern Norway in ticks collected in 1999 and 2000 (Jenkins & Kristiansen, ). Recently the bacterium was detected in southern, eastern and northern Norway, but not in the south‐western part of Norway (Jenkins et al, ; Kjelland et al, ; Larsson, Hvidsten, Stuen, Henningsson, & Wilhelmsson, ). This raises the question of whether there is a cold spot for N. mikurensis on the west coast of the country.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Distribution of Neoehrlichia mikurensis in Ixodes ricinus ticks along the coast of Norway: The western seaboard is a low‐prevalence region

Pedersen

Jenkins

Paulsen

et al. 2019

Zoonoses and Public Health

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Neoehrlichia mikurensis is a tick-borne pathogen widespread among ticks and rodents in Europe and Asia. A previous study on Ixodes ricinus ticks in Norway suggested that N. mikurensis was scarce or absent on the south-west coast of Norway, but abundant elsewhere. The aim of this study was to further investigate the prevalence and distribution of N. mikurensis along the western seaboard of Norway in comparison with more eastern and northern areas. The second aim of the study was to examine seasonal variation of the bacterium in one specific location in the south-eastern part of Norway. Questing I. ricinus were collected from 13 locations along the coast of Norway, from Brønnøysund in Nordland County to Spjaerøy in Østfold County. In total, 11,113 nymphs in 1,113 pools and 718 individual adult ticks were analysed for N. mikurensis by real-time PCR. The mean prevalence of N. mikurensis in adult ticks was 7.9% while the estimated pooled prevalence in nymphs was 3.5%. The prevalence ranged from 0% to 25.5%, with the highest prevalence in the southernmost and the northernmost locations. The pathogen was absent, or present only at low prevalence (<5%), at eight locations, all located in the west, from 58.9°N to 64.9°N. The prevalence of N. mikurensis was significantly different between counties (p < .0001).No significant seasonal variation of N. mikurensis prevalence was observed in the period May to October 2015. Our results confirm earlier findings of a low prevalence of N. mikurensis in the western seaboard of Norway. K E Y W O R D SIxodes ricinus, Neoehrlichia mikurensis, pooled samples, real-time PCR, sequencing | 131 PEDERSEN Et al.

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“…Moreover, these high-throughput screenings of TBPs in individual ticks have highlighted the co-occurrence of several pathogens in one tick, known as tick coinfections. Before the use of this novel technique, tick coinfections were evaluated by classical PCR, nested PCR or real-time PCR, and related publications focused in few pathogens, less than 10 different genera screened per publication [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59]. After the year 2016, two publications have demonstrated the presence of up to five and four different pathogen species in I. ricinus female ticks collected in France and Romania, respectively, using this high-throughput system [9,20].…”

Section: Tick-borne Pathogen Coinfections Revealed By Microfluidic Pcrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Handling the Microbial Complexity Associated to Ticks

Cabezas‐Cruz¹,

Pollet²,

Estrada-Peña³

et al. 2019

Ticks and Tick-Borne Pathogens

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Ticks and the pathogens they transmit constitute a growing burden for human and animal health worldwide. In the last years, high-throughput detection and sequencing technologies (HTT) have revealed that individual ticks carry a high diversity of microorganisms, including pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria. Despite several studies have contributed to the availability of a catalog of microorganisms associated to different tick species, major limitations and challenges remain ahead HTT studies to acquire further insights on the microbial complexity associated to ticks. Currently, using next generation sequencing (NGS), bacteria genera (or higher taxonomic levels) can be recorded; however, species identification remains problematic which in turn affects pathogen detection using NGS. Microfluidic PCR, a high-throughput detection technology, can detect up to 96 different pathogen species, and its combination with NGS might render interesting insights into pathogenmicrobiota co-occurrence patterns. Microfluidic PCR, however, is also limited because detection of pathogen strains has not been implemented, and therefore, putative associations among bacterial genotypes are currently unknown. Combining NGS and microfluidic PCR data may prove challenging. Here, we review the impact of some HTT applied to tick microbiology research and propose network analysis as an integrative data analysis benchmark to unravel the structure and significance of microbial communities associated to ticks in different ecosystems.

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Tick-borne encephalitis virus, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, Borrelia miyamotoi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis in Ixodes ricinus ticks collected from recreational islands in southern Norway

Cited by 29 publications

References 41 publications

High tick abundance and diversity of tick-borne pathogens in a Finnish city

High tick abundance and diversity of tick-borne pathogens in a Finnish city

Distribution of Neoehrlichia mikurensis in Ixodes ricinus ticks along the coast of Norway: The western seaboard is a low‐prevalence region

Handling the Microbial Complexity Associated to Ticks

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