Isolation, Detection And Genotyping Of Borrelia Burgdorferi Sensu Lato In Ticks From China

Lyme disease is a newly discovered tick-borne disease caused by Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato. Isolation, detection and genotyping of B burgdorferi in ticks will provide scientific evidence for the epidemiological investigation, clinical diagnosis and treatment, and vaccine development of lyme disease.In the study Ixodes persulcatus, Haemaphysalis concinna, H. longicornis and other ticks were collected from Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Heilongjiang province, Jilin province and Zhejiang province.I. persulcatus and H. concinna from Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Heilongjiang province were used for isolation of B. burgdorferi with BSKII culture medium. Five isolates were obtained from /. persulcatus collected from Keyihe city, Inner Mongolia autonomous region.On the basis of 5S —23S rRNA intergenic spacer, a nested-PCR method was optimized and applied to detect B. burgdorferi in ticks from Heilongjiang province, Jilin province and Zhejiang province. The infection rate was higher in I. Persulcatus (37.00%) from Jilin province than that from Helongjiang province (20.87%) (P = 0.02), which indicated that lyme disease in Jilin province might be more serious . In Zhejiang province, the infection rate in H. longicornis (28.07%) was higher than that in the other ticks (13.24% ) (P = 0.02) , indicating that H. longicornis might be one of the main vectors of B. burgdorferi in this region.Single-strand conformation polymorhpism (SSCP) analysis based on 5S —23S rRNA intergenic spacer of B. burgdorferi was developed and optimized, and used for genotyping of B. burgdorferi senu lato at the specific level and the intraspecific level together with restriction fragment length polymorhpism (RFLP) method. The findings further confirmed the dominance of B. garinii and B. afzelii in China. B. burgdorferi...