Details:

Alternative Title:
Ticks Tick Borne Dis
Personal Author:
Breuner, Nicole E. ; Ford, Shelby L. ; Hojgaard, Andrias ; Osikowicz, Lynn M. ; Parise, Christina M. ; ... More +
Breuner, Nicole E. ; Ford, Shelby L. ; Hojgaard, Andrias ; Osikowicz, Lynn M. ; Parise, Christina M. ; Rizzo, Maria F. Rosales ; Bai, Ying ; Levin, Michael L. ; Eisen, Rebecca J. ; Eisen, Lars Less -
Description:
The invasive, human-biting Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, was detected in New Jersey in the eastern United States in August of 2017 and by November of 2018 this tick had been recorded from 45 counties across 9 states, primarily along the Eastern Seaboard. The establishment of H. longicornis in the United States has raised the questions of how commonly it will bite humans and which native pathogens may naturally infect this tick. There also is a need for experimental vector competence studies with native pathogens to determine if H. longicornis can acquire a given pathogen while feeding, pass it transstadially, and then transmit the pathogen in the next life stage. In this experimental study, we evaluated the vector competence of a population of H. longicornis originating from the United States (New York) for a native isolate (B31) of the Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto (s.s.). In agreement with a previous experimental study on the vector competence of H. longicornis for Borrelia garinii, we found that uninfected H. longicornis larvae could acquire B. burgdorferi s.s. while feeding on infected Mus musculus mice (infection prevalence >50% in freshly fed larvae) but that the infection was lost during the molt to the nymphal stage. None of 520 tested molted nymphs were found to be infected, indicating that transstadial passage of B. burgdorferi s.s. is absent or rare in H. longicornis; and based on the potential error associated with the number of nymphs testing negative in this study, we estimate that the upper 95% limit for infection prevalence was 0.73%. An Ixodes scapularis process control showed both effective acquisition of B. burgdorferi s.s. from infected mice by uninfected larvae and transstadial passage to the nymphal stage (infection prevalence of 80-82% for both freshly fed larvae and molted nymphs). We also observed that although H. longicornis larvae could be compelled to feed on mice by placing the ticks within feeding capsules, attachment and feeding success was minimal (<0.5%) when larvae were placed freely on the fur of the mice. We conclude that H. longicornis is unlikely to contribute more than minimally, if at all, to transmission of Lyme disease spirochetes in the United States.
Subjects:
[+]
Animals Arachnid Vectors Borrelia Burgdorferi Female Humans Introduced Species Ixodes Ixodidae Larva Lyme Disease Mice Nymph
Source:
Ticks Tick Borne Dis. 11(1):101311
Pubmed ID:
31640938
Pubmed Central ID:
PMC7054938
Document Type:
Journal Article
Funding:
CC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States/
Place as Subject:
New York
Collection(s):
CDC Public Access
Main Document Checksum:
[+]
urn:sha256:cb2577464c4b93e131b80c945cf6cbef69ac83c0beeebfa454a7c3b7d4fedf0d
Download URL:
https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/85618/cdc_85618_DS1.pdf
File Type:

Supporting Files

• nihms-1564729.nxml

  xml

More +