To the Editor: In northwestern California, USA, the western black-legged tick, Ixodes pacificus, is a known vector of Borrelia burgdor-feri, the spirochete that causes Lyme disease. B. miyamotoi, which is more closely related to spirochetes that cause relapsing fever, has also been detected in 2 locations in California (1,2) and has recently been implicated as a human pathogen in the northeaste...

BACKGROUND Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato is a group of at least twelve closely related species some of which are responsible for Lyme disease, the most frequent zoonosis in Europe and the USA. Many of the biological features of Borrelia are unique in prokaryotes and very interesting not only from the medical viewpoint but also from the view of molecular biology. METHODS Relevant recent arti...

Relapsing fever Borrelia spp. challenge microbiologic typing because they possess segmented genomes that maintain essential genes on large linear plasmids. Antigenic variation further complicates typing. Intergenic spacer (IGS, between 16S-23S genes) heterogeneity provides resolution among Lyme disease-associated and some relapsing fever spirochetes. We used an IGS fragment for typing East Afri...

Vector-borne diseases are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in humans animals worldwide. Lyme disease, or borreliosis, is an important emerging vector-borne anthropozoonosis caused by Borrelia burgdorferi. It belongs to the genus Borrelia, phylum Spirochetae. B. burgdorferi gram-negative, flagellated spirochete having loosely coiled spiral morphology. disease distributed many parts...

The spirochetal disease relapsing fever is caused by different Borrelia species. Relapsing fever is well recognized as an infection of the blood, but little is known about its predilection for the nervous system and the eyes. To investigate neurological and ocular involvement during relapsing fever, we reviewed the clinical manifestations, pathology, and treatment of relapsing fever of humans a...

Co-infection with Borrelia species and Anaplasma phagocytophilum or Babesia spp. was assessed in a retrospective study of tick-exposed individuals from southeastern Poland. The co-infection rate of these pathogens was found to be rather low (Borrelia spp./Anaplasma phagocytophilum--4.2%, 1/24; Borrelia spp./Babesia spp.--4.2%, 1/24). However, due to the increased prevalence of Borrelia spp. in ...

Dejmkova H; Seronegative Lyme arthritis caused by Borrelia garinii. Hulinska D; Tegzova D; [From the abstract:] “A case of a female patient suffering from Lyme arthritis (LA) without elevated antibody levels to Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato is reported. Pavelka K; Seronegative Lyme arthritis was diagnosed based on the classic clinical manifestations and DNA-detected Borrelia garinii in blood ...

OBJECTIVE Establishing the seroprevalence of Lyme disease in workers from Cordoba. MATERIAL AND METHODS Representative serum samples (152) were taken from the cities of Montería, Cereté, Lorica and Cotorra in the Córdoba department in Colombia. Borrelia burgdorferi antibodies were detected by ELISA and confirmed by western blot anti-Borrelia blot assay. RPR (rapid plasma regain) test for Trep...

We genotyped 102 Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato strains isolated from ticks, animals, and patients in 11 provinces in China by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) amplification of 5S (rrf)-23S (rrl) rRNA gene spacer amplicons and multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA). The results showed that Borrelia garinii was the main genotype in China (65/102) and that it was distributed ...

Immunological cross-reactivity has been shown between related genera of the family Treponemataceae. Extracts of Borrelia cross-react with antibodies in syphilitic serum (Saurino and De Lamater, 1952) and produce positive skin tests in the later stages of syphilis (Ranque, Quilici, and Assadourian, 1967). The fluorescent treponemal antibody absorption test (FTA-ABS) is at present considered to b...