An 11-months-old male Golden Retriever occasionally found to have Ixodes ricinus ticks attached to the skin developed the acute onset of fever, lameness and inappetence followed by rapidly progressive depression, ataxia and reluctance to move. Inclusions (morulae) were observed in granulocytes. The blood analysis revealed severe thrombocytopoenia, lymphopoenia, eosinopoenia, elevation of alkali...

Environmentally responsive synthesis of surface proteins represents a hallmark of the infectious cycle of the Lyme disease agent, Borrelia burgdorferi. Here we created and analyzed a B. burgdorferi mutant lacking outer-surface protein C (OspC), an abundant Osp that spirochetes normally synthesize in the tick vector during the blood meal and down-regulate after transmission to the mammal. We dem...

Significant new insights are being made into tick modulation of host immune defenses and the implications of those host defense changes on tick-borne pathogen transmission and establishment of infection. Understanding tick saliva complexity increased with construction and analyses of salivary gland cDNA libraries. High throughput next generation sequencing and advances in proteomics are reveali...

Prevalence of arthropod-borne parasites often differs drastically between host sexes. This sex-related disparity may be related to physiological (primarily hormonal) differences that facilitate or suppress replication of the pathogen in host tissues. Alternately, differences in pathogen prevalence between host sexes may be owing to differential exposure to infected vectors. Here, we report on t...

Aggregation of parasites amongst hosts is important for the epidemiology of vector-borne diseases because hosts that support the majority of the vector population are responsible for the majority of pathogen transmission. Ixodes ricinus ticks transmit numerous pathogens of medical importance including Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. and tick-borne encephalitis virus. One transmission route involved i...

Babesiosis is an emerging zoonosis with important public health implications, as the incidence of the disease has risen dramatically over the past decade. Because the current gold standard for detection of Babesia is microscopic examination of blood smears, accurate identification requires trained personnel. Species in the genus cannot be distinguished microscopically, and Babesia can also be c...

The bacterial pathogen Staphylococcus aureus causes a number of infectious diseases, including meningitis and osteomyelitis. It is a common cause of blood-borne infections in North America. The pathogen has several mechanisms for iron uptake during times of iron scarcity. In this Paper of the Week, David Heinrichs at the University of Western Ontario and colleagues describe their discovery of a...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a blood-borne pathogen that poses a significant threat to public health worldwide. The genetic diversity and distribution of HCV genotypes in non-Western countries, particularly subSaharan Africa, is poorly documented. This study reports a phylogenetic analysis of core and NS5B gene sequences of 37 HCV strains sampled in Cameroon. A high level of genetic diversity of ...

Copyright: © 2013. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS OpenJournals. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is the most easily transmitted blood-borne pathogen and is an occupational hazard for health care workers (HCWs). Despite the fact that infection is preventable through vaccination and post-exposure immunoglobulin thera...