Abstract
Ticks, as a group, are second only to mosquitoes as vectors of pathogens to humans and are the primary vector for pathogens of livestock, companion animals, and wildlife. The role of ticks in the transmission of viruses has been known for over 100 years and yet new pathogenic viruses are still being detected and known viruses are continually spreading to new geographic locations. Partly as a result of their novelty, tick-virus interactions are at an early stage in understanding. For some viruses, even the principal tick-vector is not known. It is likely that tick-borne viruses will continue to emerge and challenge public and veterinary health long into the twenty-first century. However, studies focusing on tick saliva, a critical component of tick feeding, virus transmission, and a target for control of ticks and tick-borne diseases, point toward solutions to emerging viruses. The aim of this review is to describe some currently emerging tick-borne diseases, their causative viruses, and to discuss research on virus-tick interactions. Through focus on this area, future protein targets for intervention and vaccine development may be identified.
Highlights
Many arthropods, including ticks, transmit diseases that cause morbidity, and mortality amongst humans, livestock, companion animals, and/or wildlife
The emergence of tick-borne viruses is driven by a range of factors, often inter-related, that lead to the appearance and/or increase in human or veterinary cases of disease
Ixodid tick species have multiple life stages (Figure 1) with each feeding off a different host, and often a different host species
Summary
Many arthropods, including ticks, transmit diseases that cause morbidity, and mortality amongst humans, livestock, companion animals, and/or wildlife. This in turn can cause major economic costs to the owners of livestock affected by disease. The relationship between the tick, its host and pathogens has been shown to be complex and each may benefit or suffer detrimental effects due to the combination of physiological and immune mediated processes each elicits during infestation and infection (de la Fuente et al, 2016). Viruses form a major constituency of the pathogens transmitted by ticks (for review see Labuda and Nuttall, 2004). Recent studies using in vitro models are beginning to identify transcriptional responses in ticks cell during infection with viruses (Mansfield et al, 2017)
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