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25 December 2020 Retrospective Survey of Borrelia spp. From Rodents and Ticks in Thailand
Ratree Takhampunya, Sasikanya Thaloengsok, Bousaraporn Tippayachai, Sommai Promsathaporn, Surachai Leepitakrat, Katelynn Gross, Silas A. Davidson
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Abstract

Borrelia is a genus of spirochetal bacteria with several species known to cause disease in humans. The distribution of Borrelia has rarely been studied in Thailand. In this study, a retrospective survey of Borrelia was conducted in ticks and wild rodents to better characterize the prevalence, diversity, and distribution of Borrelia across Thailand. Several pools of DNA from tick samples were positive for Borrelia spp. (36/258, 13.9%). Borrelia theileri/B. lonestari was found in 17 tick samples (16 pools of Haemaphysalis bandicota and 1 pool of Rhipicephalus sp.), and Borrelia yangtzensis was found in 8 tick samples (2 pools of H. bandicota and 6 pools of Ixodes granulatus). Borrelia spp. were detected at low prevalence levels in rodent tissue samples (24/2001, 1.2%), with 19 identified as B. theileri or B. lonestari and 5 identified as B. miyamotoi. Several geographic and species-specific infection trends were apparent, with Ixodes ticks infected with B. yangtzensis and Haemaphysalis and Rhipicephalus ticks infected with both B. yangtzensis and B. theileri/B. lonestari. Notably, B. yangtzensis showed a similar geographic distribution to B. miyamotoi, which was identified in new areas of Thailand in this study. The flagellin gene sequence from B. miyamotoi was more similar to European (99.3–99.9%) than Japanese (96.9–97.6%) genotypes. This study greatly expands the knowledge of Borrelia in Thailand and identified several Borrelia species for the first time. It also found several ticks and rodents infected with the pathogen that were not previously known to carry Borrelia.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America 2020. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.
Ratree Takhampunya, Sasikanya Thaloengsok, Bousaraporn Tippayachai, Sommai Promsathaporn, Surachai Leepitakrat, Katelynn Gross, and Silas A. Davidson "Retrospective Survey of Borrelia spp. From Rodents and Ticks in Thailand," Journal of Medical Entomology 58(3), 1331-1344, (25 December 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/jme/tjaa279
Received: 15 July 2020; Accepted: 20 November 2020; Published: 25 December 2020
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KEYWORDS
Borrelia miyamotoi
Borrelia theileri
Borrelia yangtzensis
Ixodidae
rodent
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