A Seventeen-Year Epidemiological Surveillance Study of Borrelia burgdorferi Infections in Two Provinces of Northern Spain
Authors
Lledó García, María Lourdes; Gegúndez Cámara, María Isabel; Giménez Pardo, Consuelo; Álamo, Rufino; Fernández Soto, Pedro; [et al.]Identifiers
Permanent link (URI): http://hdl.handle.net/10017/61176DOI: doi.org/10.3390/ijerph110201661
ISSN: 1660-4601
Date
2014-01-30Affiliation
Biomedicina y BiotecnologíaBibliographic citation
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH , 2014, v. 11, n. 2, p. 1661-1672
Keywords
Lyme disease
epidemiology
public health
Document type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Rights
© The Authors
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Access rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
This paper reports a 17-year seroepidemiological surveillance study of Borrelia burgdorferi infection, performed with the aim of improving our knowledge of the epidemiology of this pathogen. Serum samples (1,179) from patients (623, stratified with respect to age, sex, season, area of residence and occupation) bitten by ticks in two regions of northern Spain were IFA-tested for B. burgdorferi antibodies. Positive results were confirmed by western blotting. Antibodies specific for B. burgdorferi were found in 13.3% of the patients; 7.8% were IgM positive, 9.6% were IgG positive, and 4.33% were both IgM and IgG positive. Five species of ticks were identified in the seropositive patients: Dermacentor marginatus (41.17% of such patients) Dermacentor reticulatus (11.76%), Rhiphicephalus sanguineus (17.64%), Rhiphicephalus turanicus (5.88%) and Ixodes ricinus (23.52%). B. burgdorferi DNA was sought by PCR in ticks when available. One tick, a D. reticulatus male, was found carrying the pathogen. The seroprevalence found was similar to the previously demonstrated in similar studies in Spain and other European countries.
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