Abstract
Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is the most important tick-borne arboviral disease in Europe. Presently, the main endemic regions in Germany are located in the southern half of the country. Although recently, sporadic human TBE cases were reported outside of these known endemic regions. The detection and characterization of invading TBE virus (TBEV) strains will considerably facilitate the surveillance and assessment of this important disease. In 2018, ticks were collected by flagging in several locations of the German federal state of Lower Saxony where TBEV-infections in humans (diagnosed clinical TBE disease or detection of TBEV antibodies) were reported previously. Ticks were pooled according to their developmental stage and tested for TBEV-RNA by RT-qPCR. Five of 730 (0.68%) pools from Ixodes spp. ticks collected in the areas of “Rauher Busch” and “Barsinghausen/Mooshuette” were found positive for TBEV-RNA. Phylogenetic analysis of the whole genomes and E gene sequences revealed a close relationship between the two TBEV isolates, which cluster with a TBEV strain from Poland isolated in 1971. This study provides first data on the phylogeny of TBEV in the German federal state of Lower Saxony, outside of the known TBE endemic areas of Germany. Our results support the hypothesis of an east-west invasion of TBEV strains in Western Europe.
Highlights
Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is one of the most important zoonotic central nervous system (CNS)diseases in humans in Europe and Asia with 10,000 to 15,000 cases per year [1]
This study provides first data on the phylogeny of TBE virus (TBEV) in the German federal state of Lower Saxony, outside of the known TBE endemic areas of Germany
Our results support the hypothesis of an east-west invasion of TBEV strains in Keywords: tick-borne encephalitis virus; tick; phylogenetic analysis; surveillance; field study
Summary
Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is one of the most important zoonotic central nervous system (CNS). Due to the short viremia in humans and the absence of detectable virus in cerebrospinal fluid of patients, most TBEV isolates are obtained from questing ticks in so-called TBEV foci [9]. 11 kilobases in length containing one open reading frame (ORF) and encoding for a large polyprotein (about 3400 amino acids) [1] This polyprotein is cleaved into three structural proteins Sporadic human TBEV cases have been reported outside of these endemic areas, e.g., the federal state of Lower Saxony [13]. Since TBE was classified as a notifiable disease in Germany in 2001, 61 human cases have been reported (2001–2018) in the federal state of. We describe the detection, isolation and first phylogenetic data of TBEV strains detected in ticks in the German federal state of
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