The infection of reintroduced ruminants - Bison bonasus and Alces alces - with Anaplasma phagocytophilum in northern Poland.

Grzegorz Karbowiak,Anna M Pyziel,Hubert Sytykiewicz,Joanna Werszko,Branislav Peťko,Aleksander W Demiaszkiewicz,Bronislava Víchová,Tomasz Szewczyk

doi:10.1515/ap-2015-0091

Abstract

The north-eastern part of Poland is considered an area of high risk for infection with tick-borne diseases, including with human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE) agents. The etiological agent of HGE is Anaplasma phagocytophilum. As the animal reservoir for A. phagocytophilum in the environment serve the species from Cervidae and Bovidae families. European bison (Bison bonasus) and elk (Alces alces) are the big ruminant species, reintroduced to the forests of Middle Europe after many decades of absence. In the foci of zoonotic diseases they are able to play a role as natural reservoir to pathogens, however, their status as protected animals means their study has been rare and fragmentary. The studies of B. bonasus were conducted in Białowieża Primeval Forest and A. alces in Biebrza National Park. PCR amplifications were performed using primers amplifing the end of the groES gene, the intergenic spacer and approximately two-thirds of the groEL gene in the first round, and primers that span a 395-bp region of the groEL gene were used in the second round. The positive results were obtained in B. bonasus and A. alces, the prevalence of infection was 66.7 and 20.0%, respectively. Randomly selected samples were sequenced, sequences were compared with GenBank entries using Blast N2.2.13 and determined as A. phagocytophilum. The results presented herein are the first record of the presence of Anaplasma phagocytophilum in A. alces, and at the same time confirm the previous observations regarding the infection of B. bonasus with A. phagocytophilum.

Highlights

The north-eastern part of Poland is considered an area of high risk for infection with tick-borne diseases, including with human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE) agents
24 out of 36 samples of DNA isolated from European bison and one of elk tested positive for the presence of A. phagocytophilum
The A. phagocytophilum nucleotide sequences from bison were compared with sequences from GenBank and showed 100% identity in the overlapped region with the A. phagocytophilum L6-9 isolate obtained from an Ixodes ricinus nymph from Spain (HM057233)

Summary

Introduction

The north-eastern part of Poland is considered an area of high risk for infection with tick-borne diseases, including with human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE) agents. Crease in the incidence of tick-borne diseases is global warming, while another factor is the growth of the big ruminant populations as well as small mammal populations which are important tick hosts Over recent years another factor has become important – this is the reintroduction of large herbivorous animals to their natural environment, which were for many years absent in the free-living state. Elk were absent in middleEuropean forests during the first half of the 20th century, and returned to Białowieża Primeval Forest and other national parks in 1970’s (Pucek and Raczyński 1983) These big ruminants are hosts for ticks, and can be infected with tick-transmitted pathogens, due to their the status as protected animals, the study of their roles as reservoirs for babesiosis, borreliosis, HGE and other tick-borne pathogens is difficult and still fragmentary (Grzeszczuk et al 2004a; Karbowiak et al 2004, 2014)

Materials and Methods

Results

Discussion