Abstract
Tickborne intracellular bacterial pathogens including Anaplasma, Coxiella burnetti, Ehrlichia, and Rickettsia cause emerging infectious diseases worldwide. PCR was used to amplify the genes of these pathogens in Haemaphysalis flava ticks collected from hedgehogs in Central China. Among 125 samples including 20 egg batches, 24 engorged females, and 81 molted male and female adult ticks, the DNA sequences and phylogenetic analysis showed that the minimum infection rate of the ticks was 4% (5/125) for A. bovis, 3.2% (4/125) for C. burnetti, 9.6%, (12/125) for E. ewingii, and 5.6% for Rickettsia including R. japonica (3.2%, 4/125) and R. raoultii (2.4%, 3/125), respectively. The prevalence of these pathogens was significantly higher in dead engorged females (83.3%, 20/24) than in eggs (5%, 1/20) and molted ticks (8.6%, 7/81). Our study indicated that H. flava ticks could be infected with multiple species of tickborne pathogens including Anaplasma, C. burnetti, Ehrlichia, and Rickettsia in Central China, and the prevalence of these pathogens was reduced during transovarial and transstadial transmission in ticks, suggesting that ticks may not be real reservoirs but only vectors for these tickborne pathogens.
Highlights
Tickborne intracellular bacteria including Anaplasma spp., Ehrlichia spp., Coxiella burnetti, and Rickettsia spp. cause severe human diseases [1,2,3,4]
We investigated the prevalence of intracellular bacterial pathogens in H. flava ticks collected from hedgehogs in Hubei
We found three genera of Rickettsiales, including: Rickettsia, Ehrlichia and Anaplasma, and Coxiella burnetti in different developmental stages of H. flava, including eggs, adult ticks, and dead engorged females
Summary
Tickborne intracellular bacteria including Anaplasma spp., Ehrlichia spp., Coxiella burnetti, and Rickettsia spp. cause severe human diseases [1,2,3,4]. Previous studies had demonstrated that H. flava were positive to bacterial pathogens such as Anaplasma bovis, Borrelia spp., Batonella, Francisella tularensis, Rickettsia japonica, parasites such as Babesia spp. and Toxoplasma gondii, and viruses such as severe fever with thrombocytopenia virus and tickborne encephalitis virus [17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25]. These studies about H. flava tickborne pathogens were mainly carried out in Japan and South Korea.
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