Borellia burgdorferi

We develop a discrete-time tick-host-pathogen model to describe the spread of a disease in a hard-bodied tick species. This model incorporates the developmental stages for a tick, the dependence of the tick life-cycle and disease transmission on host availability, and three sources of pathogen transmission. We first establish the global dynamics of the disease-free system. We then apply the model to two pathogens, Borellia burgdorferi and Anaplasma phagocytophila , using Ixodes ricinus as the tick species to study properties of the invasion and establishment of a disease numerically...

INTRODUCTION: Lyme disease has been well-described in the North America and European countries. However, information is still very limited in the developing countries including Malaysia. The Orang Asli (OA), the indigenous people of Peninsular Malaysia reside mostly in the forest and forest fringe areas abundant with the vector for Lyme disease. Here, we described the seroprevalence of Borellia burgdorferi (B. burgdorferi) among the OA and demographic variables that could be associated with seroprevalence...

Lyme disease (Borreliosis), also called the "disease of 1000 faces", is produced by a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi, transmitted by the Ixodes tick. The clinical picture is non-specific and polymorph, with multisystemic involvement. Diagnosis is most often one of exclusion, and certain diagnosis is based on the presence of Borellia antibodies. The treatment is done differently depending on the stage of the disease and the severity of injuries, being used antibiotics like Doxycycline, Amoxicillin, Erythromycin or Penicillin...

Acute transverse myelitis is a rare Borellia burgdorferi-related neurologic complication in childhood. We present a 12-year-old girl who was diagnosed with acute transverse myelitis associated with a borreliosis infection. We also review clinical features in all five cases of Borellia burgdorferi-related transverse myelitis in children. We describe here the sixth child with borreliosis-related transverse myelitis.

In population biology, loop analysis is a method of decomposing a life cycle graph into life history pathways so as to compare the relative contributions of pathways to the population growth rate across species and populations. We apply loop analysis to the transmission graph of five pathogens known to infect the black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis. In this context loops represent repeating chains of transmission that could maintain the pathogen. They hence represent completions of the life cycle, in much the same way as loops in a life cycle graph do for plants and animals...

The aim of the study was to evaluate the dynamics of T-lymphocyte cytokine profile during the acute period of tick-bore encephalitis (febrile and meningeal forms) and non-erythematous Lyme borreliosis (NELB). ELISA (Vector-Best, Novosybirsk) and IHA (Virion, Tomsk) techniques were used for laboratory diagnostics of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE). Etiological verification of Lyme borreliosis (LB) was performed using immune-enzyme test systems for detection of IgG and IgM antibodies to Borellia burgdorferi (NOVATEC Immunodiagnostica, Germany)...

Spirochetes belonging to the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (s. l.) complex have evolved remarkable ability to survive in diverse ecological niches during transmission cycles between ticks and vertebrate hosts by variable gene expression. To understand the events during spirochete transmission from feeding ticks to hosts, mRNA levels of selected B. afzelii genes (bbk32, dbpA, ospA, ospC and vlsE) were measured by quantitative real-time SYBR Green PCR. B. afzelii infected Ixodes ricinus nymphs fed on laboratory BALB/c mice for 0, 24, 48, and 72 hours...

Lyme arthritis, the most common manifestation of late Lyme disease, has been associated with the presence of Borellia burgdorferi in the joint. However, it is still unclear whether the pathogen itself is able to elicit such a sustained inflammatory response, or whether an aberrant immunological reaction of the host is the main driving force. Borrelia antigens, including lipoproteins, flagellin and DNA, are ligands of Toll-like receptors, and can thus elicit a strong stimulation of host cells, such as neutrophils, mononuclear cells and resident tissue cells...

We tested the hypothesis that cross-reactivity between the outer surface protein A (OspA) of Borellia burgdorferi and human leukocyte function antigen (LFA) type 1 mediates chronic autoimmune sequelae of Lyme disease. T cell response was studied in subjects with Lyme disease presenting with erythema migrans alone (n=36), erythema migrans with neurological disease (n=12), and chronic Lyme disease syndrome (n=20), as well as healthy control subjects from Lyme-endemic (n=50) and -nonendemic (n=18) regions. Antigens included recombinant OspA and OspC (all strain B31) and human LFA-1 peptide (IYVIEGTSKQDLTSF)...

The length of 469 Borreliae burgdorferi s.I. from the Ixodes ricinus and I. persulcatus images collected in the Moscow Region, that of 5433 B. burgdorferi s.s from the I. persulcatus nymphs and images cultured at a laboratory, and B. burdorferi s.s. grown on the BSK-II (1 and 10 passages) were measured. There was a wide range of variations in the length of specimens (3-74 microns) and in those of this group average sizes (10.7-24.8 microns). The lengths of Borelliae from natural and laboratory ticks after their molt were 17-18 microns...

VlsE is an outer surface lipoprotein of Borrelia burgdorferi that undergoes antigenic variation through an elaborate gene conversion mechanism and is thought to play a major role in the immune response to the Lyme disease borellia. The crystal structure of recombinant variant protein VlsE1 at 2.3-A resolution reveals that the six variable regions form loop structures that constitute most of the membrane distal surface of VlsE, covering the predominantly alpha-helical, invariant regions of the protein. The surface localization of the variable amino acid segments appears to protect the conserved regions from interaction with antibodies and hence may contribute to immune evasion...

Chronic exposure to JP-8 jet fuel induces lung toxicity, adverse neurological effects and some liver and kidney dysfunction. In addition, inhalation of JP-8 induces immune suppression. Besides the lung, the other major route of JP-8 exposure is via the skin. In this study we tested the hypothesis that dermal exposure to JP-8 is immune suppressive. JP-8 was applied to the skin of adult female C3H/HeN mice and various immune parameters were examined. Dermal exposure to JP-8, either multiple small exposures (50 microl for 5 days) or a single large dose (250-300 microl) resulted in immune suppression...

Lyme borreliosis, an infection caused by the tick-borne spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, is a major health problem for populations in areas of endemicity in the Northern Hemisphere. In the present study we assessed the density of ticks and the prevalence of B. burgdorferi sensu lato among ticks in popular urban recreational areas of Helsinki, Finland. Altogether 1,688 Ixodes ricinus ticks were collected from five areas located within 5 km of the downtown section of Helsinki, and 726 of them (303 nymphs, 189 females, and 234 males) were randomly chosen for laboratory analysis...

Neuroborreliosis, a manifestation of infection with the spirochete Borellia burgdorferi, has become the most frequently recognised arthropod-borne infection of the nervous system in Europe and the USA. The best criterion of an early infection with B. burgdorferi is erythema migrans (EM), but this is present in only about 40-60% of patients with validated borreliosis. Therefore use of the duration of the disease as a classification criterion for neuroborreliosis is increasing, the chronic form being distinguished from the acute when symptoms persist for more than 6 months...

BACKGROUND: Lyme disease is a multisystemic disorder caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, while sarcoidosis is a multisystemic granulomatous disease of unknown etiology. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between Lyme disease and sarcoidosis. METHODS: We examined the seroprevalence of antibody to Borellia species in patients with sarcoidosis. We performed the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, using three Japanese Borrelia species in addition to B...

Lyme arthritis, one of the common features of Borrelia burgdorferi infection in the human, is associated with the production of various monocyte derived cytokines. To investigate the expression and regulation of cytokines during the acute phase of spirochete induced inflammation, a perforated Teflon chamber was implanted under the dorsal skin of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and immunocompetent co-isogenic C.B-17 mice. The histology of the surrounding chamber tissue exhibited sterile inflammation with several features reminiscent of an inflamed synovium, i...

Enzymatic amplification of DNA using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a very sensitive and rapid way of detecting specific DNA sequences. Bacterial DNA can be detected in a wide variety of samples provided at least partial sequence information is available. For a great number of bacteria PCR detection methods have been published. Most important for the pathologist are mycobacteriae (M. tuberculosis, avium, etc.). Borellia burgdorferi, Listeria monozytogenes and chlamydiae (Ce. trachomatis, C. psittaci)...

Lyme disease is a complex multisystem disorder recognized on three continents, which is epidemic in some regions during spring, summer, and fall seasons. It primarily affects skin, nervous system, heart, and joints. It is an infectious disease caused by a spirochete Borellia burgdorferi, which is transmitted chiefly by Ixodes dammini and pacificus ticks in the United States and Ixodes ricinus in Europe. Diagnosis is based on patient contact with an endemic area, one or more characteristic clinical features, particularly erythema migrans rash, and a positive serologic test for B...

Spirochetes were isolated from 71 subadult Ixodes dentatus removed from cottontail rabbits captured in Millbrook, N.Y., and in New York, N.Y. Spirochetes were also cultured from kidney tissues of six rabbits. While all isolates reacted with monoclonal antibody H9724, which identifies the spirochetes as borreliae, more than half did not bind with antibody H5332 and even fewer reacted with H3TS, both of which were produced to outer surface protein A of Borrelia burgdorferi. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis protein profiles of three isolates differed from one another and from all previously characterized B...

Fifty Borellia burgdorferi strains isolated from humans and ticks in Europe and the United States were analyzed by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis. Eleven genetic loci were characterized on the basis of the electrophoretic mobilities of their products. Ten loci were polymorphic. The average number of alleles per locus was 5.9, with a mean genetic diversity of 0.673 among electrophoretic types (ETs). The strains were grouped into 35 ETs constituting three main divisions (I, II, and III) separated at a genetic distance greater than 0...