Molecular survey of tick-borne pathogens in Ixodid ticks collected from hunted wild animals in Tuscany, Italy

Valentina Virginia Ebani; Fabrizio Bertelloni; Barbara Turchi; Dario Filogari; Domenico Cerri

doi:10.1016/j.apjtm.2015.07.033

Molecular survey of tick-borne pathogens in Ixodid ticks collected from hunted wild animals in Tuscany, Italy

Asian Pac J Trop Med. 2015 Sep;8(9):714-7. doi: 10.1016/j.apjtm.2015.07.033. Epub 2015 Jul 29.

Authors

Valentina Virginia Ebani¹, Fabrizio Bertelloni², Barbara Turchi², Dario Filogari², Domenico Cerri²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Veterinary Science, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. Electronic address: valentina.virginia.ebani@unipi.it.
² Department of Veterinary Science, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.

PMID: 26433656
DOI: 10.1016/j.apjtm.2015.07.033

Abstract

Objective: To determine the prevalence of zoonotic tick-borne bacteria in feeding ticks removed from hunted wild animals.

Methods: PCR was executed on DNA extracted from 77 tick pools to detect Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Bartonella spp., Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, Coxiella burnetii and Rickettsia spp.

Results: A total of 432 ticks were collected: 30 (6.94%) Haemaphysalis punctata, 72 (16.7%) Dermacentor marginatus and 330 (76.38%) Ixodes ricinus. For each animal one or two pools of 3 ticks of the same species was constituted. Seventy-seven tick pools were examined by PCR: 58 (75.32%) resulted infected and among them 14 (18.18%) showed co-infections. In particular, 29 (37.66%) pools were positive for Bartonella spp., 23 (29.87%) for Anaplasma phagocytophilum, 16 (20.78%) for Rickettsia spp., and 5 (6.49%) for Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. All samples were negative for Coxiella burnetii.

Conclusions: The results demonstrate the presence of several zoonotic tick-borne pathogens in the studied area, and underline the risk of exposure to infections for hunters not only during the outdoor activity, but also when they manipulate hunted animals infested by infected ticks.

Keywords: Hunters; Ixodid ticks; PCR; Tick-borne bacteria; Wild animals.