Affiliation:
1. Biochemical Pharmacology, Faculty of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
Abstract
ABSTRACT
In Europe,
Borrelia burgdorferi
genospecies causing Lyme borreliosis are mainly transmitted by the tick
Ixodes ricinus
. Since its discovery,
B. burgdorferi
has been the subject of many epidemiological studies to determine its prevalence and the distribution of the different genospecies in ticks. In the current study we systematically reviewed the literature on epidemiological studies of
I. ricinus
ticks infected with
B. burgdorferi
sensu lato. A total of 1,186 abstracts in English published from 1984 to 2003 were identified by a PubMed keyword search and from the compiled article references. A multistep filter process was used to select relevant articles; 110 articles from 24 countries contained data on the rates of infection of
I. ricinus
with
Borrelia
in Europe (112,579 ticks), and 44 articles from 21 countries included species-specific analyses (3,273 positive ticks). These data were used to evaluate the overall rate of infection of
I. ricinus
with
Borrelia
genospecies, regional distributions within Europe, and changes over time, as well as the influence of different detection methods on the infection rate. While the infection rate was significantly higher in adults (18.6%) than in nymphs (10.1%), no effect of detection method, tick gender, or collection period (1986 to 1993 versus 1994 to 2002) was found. The highest rates of infection of
I. ricinus
were found in countries in central Europe.
B. afzelii
and
B. garinii
are the most common
Borrelia
species, but the distribution of genospecies seems to vary in different regions in Europe. The most frequent coinfection by
Borrelia
species was found for
B. garinii
and
B. valaisiana
.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Ecology,Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology,Food Science,Biotechnology
Cited by
308 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献