Zoonotic pathogens that cause devastating morbidity and mortality in humans may be relatively harmless in their natural reservoir hosts. The tick-borne bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi causes Lyme disease in humans but few studies have investigated whether this pathogen reduces the fitness of its reservoir hosts under natural conditions. We analyzed four years of capture-mark-recapture (CMR) data...

Strain superinfection affects the dynamics of epidemiological spread of pathogens through a host population. Superinfection has recently been shown to occur for two genetically distinct strains of the tick-borne pathogen Anaplasma marginale that encode distinctly different surface protein variants. Superinfected animals could serve as a reservoir for onward transmission of both strains if the t...

Tick-borne diseases represent major public and animal health issues worldwide. Ixodes ricinus, primarily associated with deciduous and mixed forests, is the principal vector of causative agents of viral, bacterial, and protozoan zoonotic diseases in Europe. Recently, abundant tick populations have been observed in European urban green areas, which are of public health relevance due to the expos...

Tick-borne flaviviruses (TBFs) affect human health globally. Human vaccines provide protection against some TBFs, and antivirals are available, yet TBF-specific control strategies are limited. Advances in genomics offer hope to understand the viral complement transmitted by ticks, and to develop disruptive, data-driven technologies for virus detection, treatment, and control. The genome assembl...

Ticks and tick-borne pathogens have evolved together, resulting in a complex relationship in which the pathogen's life cycle is perfectly coordinated with the tick's feeding cycle, and the tick can harbour high pathogen levels without affecting its biology. Tick-borne diseases (TBDs) continue to emerge and/or spread, and pose an increasing threatto human and animal health. The disruptive impact...

INTRODUCTION We previously identified tick salivary lectin pathway inhibitor (TSLPI) in Ixodes scapularis, a vector for Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto (s.s.) in North America. TSLPI is a salivary protein facilitating B. burgdorferi s.s. transmission and acquisition by inhibiting the host lectin complement pathway through interference with mannose binding lectin (MBL) activity. Since Ixodes ...

Vector-borne diseases are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in humans animals worldwide. Lyme disease, or borreliosis, is an important emerging vector-borne anthropozoonosis caused by Borrelia burgdorferi. It belongs to the genus Borrelia, phylum Spirochetae. B. burgdorferi gram-negative, flagellated spirochete having loosely coiled spiral morphology. disease distributed many parts...

Anaplasma phagocytophilum is an emerging pathogen that causes human granulocytic anaplasmosis. Infection with this zoonotic pathogen affects cell function in both vertebrate host and the tick vector, Ixodes scapularis. Global tissue-specific response and apoptosis signaling pathways were characterized in I. scapularis nymphs and adult female midguts and salivary glands infected with A. phagocyt...

Socio-economic factors and environmental considerations have increasingly encouraged the search for methods of tick control other than acaricidal treatment. Biological control management regimes have, so far, not proved to be sound replacements for acaricides. The major natural control methods employed successfully at present are host resistance and pasture management. The former has been exten...

Lyme disease, caused by Borrelia burgdorferi, is a vector-borne illness that requires the bacteria to adapt to distinctly different environments in its tick vector and various mammalian hosts. Effective colonization (acquisition phase) of a tick requires the bacteria to adapt to tick midgut physiology. Successful transmission (transmission phase) to a mammal requires the bacteria to sense and r...