Study on Presence of Borrelia persica in Soft Ticks in Western Iran
Abstract
Background: A molecular survey was conducted to investigatethe presence of pathogenic Borrelia persica species causing the tick borne relapsing fever (TBRF) in Takistan district Qazvin Province, western Iran.
Methods: A number of 1021 soft ticks were collected from 31 villages including previously reported infected and none-infected TBRF cases and individually examined for the presenceof B. persica DNA by conventional PCR targeting the 16SrRNA.
Results: A total of 1021 soft ticks of three species of Ornithodouros tholozani (120: 11.75%), O. lahorensis (461: 45.15%) and Argas persicus (440: 43.1%) were collected and tested against Borrelia infection. Soft ticks were more prevalent (67%) in infected areas than none infected areas. The rate O. tholozani in infected areas was much greater (29 times) than none infected areas. Ninety seven percent of soft ticks in none infected areas were of O. tholozani. Sixteen (16.7%) ticks of tested (n=95) O. tholozani were infected with B. persica. Three (1.3%) out of 205 soft ticks of O. lahorensis were positive for Borrelia sp., and no infection was observed in A. persicus. TaqI RFLP analysisand sequence analysis of the positive PCR products showed the presence of B. persica. The RFLP analysis showed that the positive ticks of O. lahorensis were infected with unknown Borrelia species.
Conclusion: This study showed that although there were no TBRF cases in Takisan, but still infected O. tholozani, the known vector of TBRF, presented in the region. Control measures needs to be fulfilled in Thakisan.
Aghighi Z, Assmar M , Piazak N, Javadian E, Seyedi Rashti MA, Kia EB, Rassi Y, Vatandoost H (2007) Distribution of Soft Ticks and Their Natural Infection with Borrelia in a Focus of Relapsing Fever in Iran. Iran J Arthropod-Borne Dis. 1: 14–18.
Arshi S, Majidpoor A, Sadeghi H, Asmar M, Emdadi D, Derakhshan MH (2002) Relapsing fever in Ardabil, a north- western province of Iran. Arch Iranian Med. 5: 141–145.
Assmar M, Soleimani M, Oreizi F, Piazak N, Hossini SM, Saghiri R, Zamani Z (2002) Purification of Periplasmic Flagellar Anti- gen from Borrelia microtti. Scand J Infect Dis. 34: 267–272.
Assous MV, Wilamowoski A (2009) Review of relapsing fever borreliosis in Eurasia- forgotten, but certainly not gone. Clin Mi- crobiol Infec. 15(5): 407–414.
Barbour AG, Hayes SF (1986) Biology of Borrelia species. Microbiol Rev. 50: 381-400.
Cao WC, Gao YM, Zhang PH, Zhang XT, Dai QH., Dumler JS, Fang LQ and Yang H (2000) Identification of Ehr- lichia chaffeensis by nested PCR in ticks from southern China. J Clin Micro- biol. 38: 2778–2780.
Cerar T, Ogrinc K, Cimperman J, Lotri-Fur- lan S, Strle F, RuziR-SabljiR E (2008) Validation of Cultivation and PCR Meth- ods for Diagnosis of Lyme Neurobor- reliosis. J Clin Microbiol. 46(10): 3375-3379.
Estrada-Pen˜ AA, Bouattour A, Camicas JL, Walker AR (2004) Ticks of Domestic Animals in Mediterranean Region. A Guide to Identification of Species. Univer- sity of Zaragoza Press, Zaragoza, Spain.
Ghaderi A (2001) Study on distribution of soft ticks in indoor and outdoor and potential infection of O.tholozani to B. persica in Hamadan. [MSc Thesis]. School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran.
Horka H, Cerna-Kyckova K, Fiserova L, Ko- pecky G (2008) Efficiency of experi- mental infection of Ixodes ricinus ticks with Borrelia burgdorferi spirochetes. Int J Med Microbiol. 298: 177–179.
Karimi Y (1980) Recurrent fever and its epi- demiology Tehran, Iran: Pasteur Institute of Iran Publications 55–58.
Karimi Y, Hovind-Hougen K, Birch-Ander- sen A, Asmar M (1979) Borrelia persica and B baltazardi sp. nov.: experimental pathogenicity for some animals and com- parison of the ultrastructure. Ann Micro- biol. (Paris) 130B: 157–168.
Masoumi Asl H, Goya MM, Vatandoost H, Zahraei SM, Mafi M, Asmar M, Piazak N, Aghighi Z (2009) The epidemiology of tick-borne relapsing fever in Iran during (1997–2006) Travel Med Infect Dis. 7(3): 160–164.
Moemenbellah-Fard MD, Benafshi O, Rafi- nejad J, Ashraf H (2009) Tick-borne relapsing fever in a new highland en- demic focus of western Iran. Ann Trop Med Parasitol. 103(6): 529–537.
Nekoui N, Asmar M, Amirkhani A, Piazak N (1999) Distribution of ticks and their association with Borrelia in Semnan province. Iranian J Publ Health 28: 103–109.
Oshaghi MA, Rafinejad J, Choubdar N, Pi- azak N, Vatandoost H, Telmadarraiy Z, Mohtarami F, Maleki Ravasa N (2010) Discrimination of Relapsing Fever Borre- lia persica and B. microtti by Diagnos- tic Species-Specific Primers and PCR- Restriction Fragment Length Polymor- phism. Vector Borne and Zoonotic Dis- ease, Epub ahead of print (In Press).
Parola P, Raoult D (2001) Ticks and tickborne bacterial diseases in humans: an emerging infectious threat. Clin Infect Dis. 32: 897–928.
Rafiei A, Rak H (1986) Arthropod Parasitol- ogy. Tehran University Publication.
Ras NM, Lascola B, Postic D, Culter SJ,Rodhain F, Baranton G, Raoult D (1996) Phylogenesis of relapsing fever Borrelia spp. Int J Syst Bacteriol. 46(4): 859–865.
Rafinejad J, Oshaghi MA, Choubdar N, Pi- azak N, Savat T, Mohtarami F, Banafshi O, Taghiloo B, Maleki N (2010) Diagnostic value of PCR for detection of Borrelia persica DNA in soft ticks. Iranian J Public Health. In press.
Rebaudet S, Parola P (2006) Epidemiology of relapsing fever borreliosis in Europe, FEMS Immunol Med Microbiol. 48: 11–15.
Rauter C, Hartung T (2005) Prevalence of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato genospe- cies in Ixodes ricinus ticks in Europe: a metaanalysis. Appl Environ Microbiol.71: 7203–7216.
Schwartz I, Varde S, Nadelman RB, Wormser GP, Fish D (1997) Inhibition of efficient polymerase chain reaction amplification of Borrelia burgdorferi DNA in blood- fed ticks. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 56:339–342.
Zaim M, Shayeghi M (1989) Pictorial Key of Mites and Ticks. Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Health Publication. (In Persian).
| Files | ||
| Issue | Vol 4 No 2 (2010) | |
| Section | Articles | |
| Keywords | ||
| Borrelia persica tick borne relapsing fever (TBRF) PCR-RFLP Takistan Iran | ||
| Rights and permissions | |
|
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. |
