Ticks harbor numerous bacterial, protozoal, and viral pathogens that can cause serious infections in humans and domestic animals. Active surveillance of the tick vector can provide insight into the frequency and distribution of important pathogens in the environment. Nucleic-acid based detection of tick-borne bacterial, protozoan, and viral pathogens requires the extraction of both DNA and RNA ...

Well-documented cases of simultaneous human infection with more than one tick-borne pathogen are rare. To our knowledge only two dual infections have been reported: simultaneous human infection with the agent of human granulocytic ehrlichiosis and Borrelia burgdorferi and simultaneous human infection with B. burgdorferi and Babesia microti (1-2). Rocky Mountain spotted fever has long been known...

Objective: To identify common and distinctive characteristics of the epidemical process tick-borne encephalitis Lyme borreliosis on example Republic Karelia. Materials methods. The frequency infected tick bites, dynamics, intensity, territorial, gender, age social features incidence in 2000–2021 were analyzed according to official statistics, epidemiological examination foci laboratory studies....

Molecular methods have increased the number of known microorganisms associated with ticks significantly. Some of these newly identified microorganisms are readily linked to human disease while others are yet unknown to cause human disease. The face of tick-borne disease discovery has changed with more diseases now being discovered in a "reversed way," detecting disease cases only years after th...

Deer support high tick intensities, perpetuating tick populations, but they do not support tick-borne pathogen transmission, so are dilution hosts. We test the hypothesis that absence of deer (loss of a dilution host) will result in either an increase or a reduction in tick density, and that the outcome is scale dependent. We use a complementary methodological approach starting with meta-analys...

Over 40 cell lines are currently available from 13 ixodid and one argasid tick species. The successful isolation and propagation of several economically important tick-borne pathogens in tick cell lines has created a useful model to study interactions between tick cells and these viral and bacterial disease agents. Tick cell lines have already proved to be a useful tool in helping to define the...

Geographic information systems combined with methods of spatial analysis provide powerful new tools for understanding the epidemiology of diseases and for improving disease prevention and control. In this study, the spatial distribution of a newly recognized tick-borne disease, human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE), was investigated for nonrandom patterns and clusters in an area known to be end...

Tick-borne relapsing fever is characterized by recurring fevers separated by afebrile periods and is accompanied by nonspecific constitutional symptoms. It occurs after a patient has been bitten by a tick infected with a Borrelia spirochete. The diagnosis of tick-borne relapsing fever requires an accurate characterization of the fever and a thorough medical, social, and travel history of the pa...

Ticks require blood meal to complete development and reproduction. Multifunctional tick salivary glands play a pivotal role in tick feeding and transmission of pathogens. Tick salivary molecules injected into the host modulate host defence responses to the benefit of the feeding ticks. To colonize tick organs, tick-borne microorganisms must overcome several barriers, i.e., tick gut membrane, ti...