Lyme Disease Risk of Exposure to Blacklegged Ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) Infected with Borrelia burgdorferi (Spirochaetales: Spirochaetaceae) in Pittsburgh Regional Parks

Abstract

Abstract Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector-borne illness and sixth most commonly reported notifiable infectious disease in the United States. The majority of cases occur in the Northeast and upper-Midwest, and the number and geographic distribution of cases is steadily increasing. The blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis Say) is the principal vector of the Lyme disease spirochete (Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto) in eastern North America. Although Lyme disease risk has been studied in residential and recreational settings across rural to urban landscapes including metropolitan areas, risk within U.S. cities has not been adequately evaluated despite the presence of natural and undeveloped public parkland where visitors could be exposed to B. burgdorferi-infected I. scapularis. We studied the occurrence of I. scapularis and infection prevalence of B. burgdorferi in four insular regional parks within the city of Pittsburgh to assess Lyme disease risk of exposure to infected adults and nymphs. We found that the density of I. scapularis adults (1.16 ± 0.21 ticks/100 m2) and nymphs (3.42 ± 0.45 ticks/100 m2), infection prevalence of B. burgdorferi in adults (51.9%) and nymphs (19.3%), and density of infected adults (0.60 ticks/100 m2) and nymphs (0.66 ticks/100 m2) are as high in these city parks as nonurban residential and recreational areas in the highly endemic coastal Northeast. These findings emphasize the need to reconsider, assess, and manage Lyme disease risk in greenspaces within cities, especially in high Lyme disease incidence states.