Abstract
Tick-borne diseases are a major threat to human and animal health. An increasing number of natural habitats have been transformed into urban areas by human activity; hence, the number of reported tick bites in urban and suburban areas has risen. This retrospective analysis evaluated 53 scientific reports concerning infections of Ixodes ricinus ticks collected from urban and suburban areas of Europe between 1991 and 2017. The results indicate significant differences in many variables, including a higher number of Anaplasma phagocytophilum infections in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe. The opposite result was observed for Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis infections. A comparison of climate zones revealed that Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. infections have the greatest median incidence rate in subtropical climate zones. No statistical significance was found when comparing other tick-borne pathogens (TBPs), such as Borrelia miyamotoi, Rickettsia spp., Babesia spp., Bartonella spp., Ehrlichia spp., Coxiella burnetii and Francisella tularensis. The analysis also showed significant differences in the overall prevalence of TBPs according to average temperatures and rainfall across Europe. This retrospective study contributes to the knowledge on the occurrence and prevalence of TBPs in urbanized areas of Europe and their dependence on the habitats and geographical distributions of ticks. Due to the increased risk of tick bites, it is of great importance to investigate infections in ticks from urban and suburban areas.
Highlights
Tick-borne diseases are a major threat to human and animal health
The most common and well-known disease in the USA and Europe is Lyme borreliosis, a systemic infectious disease caused by Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (s.l.) spirochetes transmitted by ticks mainly from the genus Ixodes[1,2,3,4]
All the detected pathogens were included in the analysis of overall tick-borne pathogens (TBPs) prevalence
Summary
An increasing number of natural habitats have been transformed into urban areas by human activity; the number of reported tick bites in urban and suburban areas has risen This retrospective analysis evaluated 53 scientific reports concerning infections of Ixodes ricinus ticks collected from urban and suburban areas of Europe between 1991 and 2017. Another major risk factor for humans is the transformation of natural ecosystems into cities or recreational areas due to urbanization, forcing plants and animals to leave their habitats or adapt to the new environment[7]. Akimov and Nebogatkin showed that between 1907 and 2014, the number of publications on ticks in urban landscapes increased almost www.nature.com/scientificreports ten-fold They point out that the growing interest is related to the appearance of new diagnostic methods and less well known tick-borne infections, such as babesiosis or rickettsiosis[7]
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