Abstract
Hematophagous arthropods are responsible for the transmission of a variety of pathogens that cause disease in humans and animals. Ticks of the Ixodes ricinus complex are vectors for some of the most frequently occurring human tick-borne diseases, particularly Lyme borreliosis and tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV). The search for vaccines against these diseases is ongoing. Efforts during the last few decades have primarily focused on understanding the biology of the transmitted viruses, bacteria and protozoans, with the goal of identifying targets for intervention. Successful vaccines have been developed against TBEV and Lyme borreliosis, although the latter is no longer available for humans. More recently, the focus of intervention has shifted back to where it was initially being studied which is the vector. State of the art technologies are being used for the identification of potential vaccine candidates for anti-tick vaccines that could be used either in humans or animals. The study of the interrelationship between ticks and the pathogens they transmit, including mechanisms of acquisition, persistence and transmission have come to the fore, as this knowledge may lead to the identification of critical elements of the pathogens’ life-cycle that could be targeted by vaccines. Here, we review the status of our current knowledge on the triangular relationships between ticks, the pathogens they carry and the mammalian hosts, as well as methods that are being used to identify anti-tick vaccine candidates that can prevent the transmission of tick-borne pathogens.
Highlights
There has been an increasing incidence of several vectorborne diseases, including those that are mosquito-borne, such as Zika and dengue, as well as those that are tickborne, such as Lyme borreliosis (LB) and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE)
The feeding of Ixodes ticks on SUB-immunized animals was hampered and nymphs fed as larvae on A. phagocytophilum-infected mice immunized with recombinant SUB had reduced pathogen levels [128]. These findings demonstrate that more knowledge about tick-host-pathogen interactions in human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA) and tick-borne fever (TBF) is needed to identify candidates for anti-tick vaccines that could interfere with A. phagocytophilum transmission from the tick to the host
It requires the involvement of geneticists, epidemiologists, immunologists, vector biologists, bioinformaticians, physicians and veterinarians, public health specialists, and the pharmaceutical industry, amongst others
Summary
There has been an increasing incidence of several vectorborne diseases, including those that are mosquito-borne, such as Zika and dengue, as well as those that are tickborne, such as Lyme borreliosis (LB) and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE). In the USA, tick-borne diseases have more than doubled in the last decade, accounting for 77% of all vector-borne diseases, of which 82% of the cases correspond to LB [1]. In Europe, LB is endemic and considered a public health problem [2]. Besides LB, TBE is endemic in most European countries and has been predicted to increase in the future [4, 5]. Other less-known tick-borne pathogens (TBPs), including Borrelia miyamotoi, Neoehrlichia mikurensis, Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, Powassan virus, Bourbon virus, Rickettsia species, Babesia species as well as Anaplasma phagocytophilum are starting to be slowly recognized as (re)emerging tickborne diseases [6, 7]
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