- 著者
- Yusuke MURASE Satoru KONNAI Naftaly GITHAKA Arata HIDANO Kyle TAYLOR Takuya ITO Ai TAKANO Shuji ANDO Hiroki KAWABATA Toshio TSUBOTA Shiro MURATA Kazuhiko OHASHI
- 出版者
- 公益社団法人 日本獣医学会
- 雑誌
- Journal of Veterinary Medical Science (ISSN:09167250)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.75, no.2, pp.215-218, 2013 (Released:2013-03-01)
- 参考文献数
- 27
- 被引用文献数
- 8 17
In this study, the prevalence of Borrelia infections in Ixodes ticks from a site in Hokkaido, Japan, with confirmed cases of Lyme disease was determined by a PCR method capable of detecting and differentiating between strains of pathogenic Borrelia, with particular emphasis on Borrelia garinii (B. garinii) and Borrelia afzelli (B. afzelli), using tick-derived DNA extracts as template. A total of 338 ticks, inclusive of 284 Ixodes persulcatus (I. persulcatus), were collected by flagging vegetation in mid-spring. Ninety-eight (34.5%) of I. persulcatus tested positive for Borrelia species DNA, whereas the overall prevalence of Borrelia species in Ixodes ovatus and Haemaphysalis longicornis ticks was 19.5 and 7.7%, respectively. PCR-RFLP and sequence analysis of Borrelia rrf(5S)-rrl(23S) intergenic spacer DNA amplicons indicated that they originated from three different Borrelia species namely, B. garinii, B. afzelii and B. japonica. Among the I. persulcatus species, which is a known vector of human borreliosis, 86 were mono-infected with B. garinii, 2 ticks were mono-infected with B. afzelii and whereas 12 ticks had dual infections. Most significant, 11 of the I. persulcatus ticks were coinfected with Anaplasma phagocytophilum and B. garinii. The difference between the number of obtained and expected co-infections was significant (χ2=4.32, P=0.038).