Abstract

Experimental infection of ticks with pathogens such as spirochetes of the genus Borrelia (B.), is a critical step to better understand the mechanisms and the kinetics of infection. At present, four procedures for infection of ticks with B. burgdorferi have been described: (i) feeding ticks on infected rodents; (ii) tick immersion in a solution containing the spirochetes; (iii) microinjection of spirochetes directly into the tick gut and (iv) capillary or membrane feeding of ticks with a solution or blood containing Borrelia species. organisms. To reduce the use of live animals and for standardization of the conditions of experiments, the three latter procedures are recommended. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of an immersion procedure to generate B. burgdorferi-infected ticks and determine whether Ixodes scapularis and I. ricinus ticks were infective to dogs. Pathogen free, unfed larvae (I. scapularis and I. ricinus) and nymphs (I. scapularis) were immersed in BSK-H medium containing approximately 10⁷ B. burgdorferi sensu stricto (strain B31) organisms per mL. Immersed ticks were then fed to repletion on rabbits and held under optimum environmental conditions (22°C and 80 ± 10% relative humidity) for moulting. The infection rate in ticks was determined after moulting by qPCR, while their potential infectivity was evaluated on dogs. It was found that immersed larvae and nymphs acquired spirochetes. The spirochetes were detected by qPCR in 18.7% and 37.5% of adult I. ricinus and I. scapularis, respectively. For nymphs, B. burgdorferi-specific DNA was detected in each of three pools of 20 I. scapularis. Nevertheless, all infested dogs remained seronegative during the three months after infestation and no clinical signs of borreliosis were detected.

Keywords: Borrelia burgdorferi; Ixodes scapularis; Ixodes ricinus; Immersion Technique; Transmission, Dogs

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Citation

Citation: Djamel Tahir., et al. “Assessment of an Immersion Technique for Generating of Borrelia burgdorferi-Infected and Infectious Ixodes scapularis and Ixodes ricinus Ticks". Acta Scientific Microbiology 3.9 (2020): 159-163.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Djamel Tahir., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.