All Posts Tagged With: "lyme borrelia"

Linda’s comment….too bad that Medical University of Vienna, Wienna Austria can work with the US docs on this horrific disease….??

Full article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=The%20expanding%20Lyme%20Borrelia%20complex-clinical%20significance%20of%20genomic%20species%3F

Excerpt:

Ten years after the 
discovery of spirochaetes as agents of Lyme disease in 1982 in the USA, 
three genomic species had diverged from the phenotypically heterogeneous 
strains of Borrelia burgdorferi isolated in North America and Europe: 
Borrelia afzelii, B. burgdorferi sensu stricto (further B. burgdorferi), 
and Borrelia garinii. 

Full article: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010650 

Excerpt:

BACKGROUND: Lyme disease, caused by various species of Borrelia, is transmitted by Ixodes ticks in North America and Europe. Studies have shown the genotype of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto (s.s.) or the species of B. burgdorferi sensu lato (s.l.) affects the ability of the bacteria to cause local or disseminated infection in humans. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We used a multilocus PCR electrospray mass spectrometry assay to determine the species and genotype Borrelia from ticks collected in New York, Connecticut, Indiana, Southern Germany, and California and characterized isolates from parts of the United States and Europe. These analyses identified 53 distinct genotypes of B. burgdorferi sensu stricto with higher resolution than ospC typing. Genotypes of other members of the B. burgdorferi sensu lato complex were also identified and genotyped including B. afzelii, B. garinii, B. lusitaniae, B. spielmanii, and B. valaisiana. While each site in North America had genotypes unique to that location, we found genotypes shared between individual regions and two genotypes found across the United States. Significant B. burgdorferi s.s. genotypic diversity was observed between North America and Europe: only 6.6% of US genotypes (3 of 45) were found in Europe and 27% of the European genotypes (3 of 11) were observed in the US. Interestingly, 39% of adult Ixodes scapularis ticks from North America were infected with more than one genotype of B. burgdorferi s.s. and 22.2% of Ixodes ricinus ticks from Germany were infected with more than one genotype of B. burgdorferi s.l.