Tick-borne encephalitis virus in ticks detached from humans and follow-up of serological and clinical response

Factors Determining Immunological Response to Vaccination against Tick-Borne Encephalitis Virus in Older Individuals

“…Three of the 533 participants in this study were bitten by ticks infected with TBEV as previously described [33]. The 3 ticks had been feeding for <12 h, <12 h, and 24–36 h, and the virus concentrations in the ticks were <400, <400, and 4,200 TBEV copies/tick respectively (Table 2).…”

“…The study participants are also asked to collect any additional ticks that bite them during the study period. More information regarding the details of the study design is available in the hitherto published papers from the TBD STING-study that was started in 2008 [33]–[35], and from the pilot study that was conducted during 2007 in the province of Östergötland, Sweden [36], [37].…”

“…The ticks collected from the study participants in this study have previously been analyzed for TBEV [33], and relevant data from those tests are included in this paper (regarding 3 TBEV positive ticks detached from 3 of the study participants). All the serum samples analyzed in this paper were drawn at the 3-month follow-up, except from the 3 individuals that were bitten by TBEV infected ticks, in whom both the first and 3-month serum samples were analyzed in parallel to determine if the antibody titer changed in response to the bite of a TBEV infected tick.…”

“…The Åland Islands are since 2008 a part of our on-going prospective epidemiological study, denoted the tick-borne diseases (TBD) STING-study [33]–[37]. In analysis of TBEV antibodies in serum samples from study participants from the Åland Islands with a history of recent tick bite, we found that a large proportion of participants states that they were vaccinated against TBEV but were in fact seronegative.…”

The ecology of Lyme borreliosis risk : interactions between lxodes ricinus, rodents and Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato

“…Larvae are responsible for 1.3 to 4.2% of human tick bites (Fonville et al 2013, Hofhuis et al 2013, Lindblom et al 2014, and it is estimated that in The Netherlands 30,000 people were bitten by larvae. A significant number of Lyme borreliosis patients did not recognize or remember being bitten by a tick, which might especially be the case for larval ticks due to their minute size (Figure 1).…”