Bartonella is the monotypic genus of the family Bartonellaceae among Alphaproteobacteria[1]. Bartonella species are fastidious Gram-negative, slightly curved rod bacteria characterized by a small cell size (0.5–0.6 × 1.0 μm) [2]. They are facultative intracellular bacteria with a unique intraerythrocyte lifestyle. Currently the Bartonella genus includes 35 validly published species and three subspecies [3], [4]. Bartonella species usually colonize the intestine of the arthropod vector or the bloodstream of the mammalian host [4], [5]. In addition, our understanding of the involvement of these microorganisms in human diseases continues to grow, as does the range of clinical manifestations [6], [7]. At least 13 Bartonella species are responsible for human diseases, including B. bacilliformis, B. quintana and B. henselae, which cause Carrión disease, trench fever and cat-scratch disease respectively. Bartonella species are also associated with chronic bacteraemia and/or endocarditis, bacillary angiomatosis, peliosis hepatis, prolonged fever of unknown origin, retinitis, uveitis and myocarditis in humans[6]. Other mammalian species that may host Bartonella species include dogs, coyotes, foxes, cattle, deer, elk, bats and many rodent species [8], [9], [10].
Here we present the description of Bartonella massiliensis strain OS09T (= CSURB624T = DSM 23169), a new species of the genus Bartonella isolated from a soft tick, Ornithodoros sonrai, including its complete annotated genome.
Sarah LeBlanc with her 10-year-old barrel racing horse, Sloane. (Submitted by Sarah LeBlanc)
A Yarmouth, N.S., horse owner wants others to know about anaplasma, a tick-borne disease that her horse, Sloane, contracted before Halloween.
“If you see swollen legs on your horse, it means something, do something,” said Sarah LeBlanc, Sloane’s owner.
Anaplasma causes serious fevers, loss of appetite and swollen and painful limbs. If a fever is left untreated, it can lead to other complications like laminitis, which can damage a horse’s hooves. Anaplasma is rarely fatal and usually responds well to treatment.
On Monday, LeBlanc received confirmation that a blood test determined Sloane had anaplasma and Lyme disease.
LeBlanc said she first realized something was wrong with her 10-year-old barrel racing horse last Wednesday.
Sloane is responding well to treatment of anaplasma. Her owner, Sarah LeBlanc, says she first knew something was wrong when she saw Sloane’s legs were swollen. (Submitted by Sarah LeBlanc)
“If you have a horse with four swollen legs, it’s not the result of an injury, it’s got to be the result of a side effect or something,” LeBlanc said. “And so I thought I would give it 24 hours to see if it goes away on its own.”
Swollen legs aside, LeBlanc said Sloane seemed pretty normal and she was still eating.
But when a horse farrier, a person whose job it is to put horseshoes on horses, saw Sloane that night, she was advised to speak with a vet as soon as possible.
LeBlanc called Dr. Megan Crouse, a veterinarian from the South Shore Veterinary Services in Wileville, N.S., and described the symptoms. Crouse told her it could be anaplasma, a disease LeBlanc had never heard of.
Crouse told CBC News in an email that anaplasma pops up at this time of year. She said it can be treated with antibiotics, anti-inflammatory medications and supportive care.
Local vet sees uptick in anaplasma cases
Crouse said her clinic has treated between 10 to 12 cases this year and all have been in the last four weeks. She said it is spread through tick bites.
“The carrier must bite and be attached for 24 to 48 hours to spread infection,” Crouse said.
Tick prevention is key.
“Things such as keeping pastures clipped short, using fly/tick repellent daily, daily thorough tick checks are all things to help prevent exposure,” she said.
LeBlanc said she always checks Sloane and her other horse for ticks. She said there are a lot of them in her area.
“I’ve been picking hundreds of the ticks off the horses,” she said.
LeBlanc posted about the ordeal on Facebook last week and as of Monday, it has been shared about 500 times.
“It’s an illness, it’s a disease and you just can’t ignore it and let it go untreated,” she said.
The good news, LeBlanc said, is Sloane’s temperature continues to be normal and she’s responding well to the medicine.
“She seems happy and content, so she is certainly on the road to recovery,” she said.
Ticks Tick Borne Dis. 2019 Oct 17:101310. doi: 10.1016/j.ttbdis.2019.101310. [Epub ahead of print]
Presence of diverse Rickettsia spp. and absence of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato in ticks in an East Texas forest with reduced tick density associated with controlled burns.
As tick-borne diseases continue to emerge across the United States, there is need for a better understanding of the tick and pathogen communities in the southern states and of habitat features that influence transmission risk. We surveyed questing and on-host ticks in pine-dominated forests with various fire management regimes in the Sam Houston National Forest, a popular recreation area near Houston, Texas. Four linear transects were established- two with a history of controlled burns, and two unburned. Systematic drag sampling yielded 112 ticks from two species, Ixodes scapularis (n=73) and Amblyomma americanum (n=39), with an additional 106 questing ticks collected opportunistically from drag cloth operators.
There was a significant difference in systematically-collected questing tick density between unburned (15 and 18 ticks/1000 m2) and burned (2 and 4 ticks/1000 m2) transects. We captured 106 rodents and found 74 ticks on the rodents, predominantly Dermacentor variabilis. One unburned transect had significantly more ticks per mammal than any of the other three transects. DNA of Rickettsia species was detected in 146/292 on and off-host ticks, including the ‘Rickettsial endosymbiont of I. scapularis’ and Rickettsia amblyommatis, which are of uncertain pathogenicity to humans. Borrelia lonestari was detected in one A. americanum, while Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto, the agent of Lyme disease, was not detected in any tick samples. Neither Borrelia nor Rickettsia spp. were detected in any of the mammal ear biopsies (n=64) or blood samples (n=100) tested via PCR.
This study documents a high prevalence in ticks of Rickettsia spp. thought to be endosymbionts, a low prevalence of relapsing fever group Borrelia in ticks, and a lack of detection of Lyme disease-group Borrelia in both ticks and mammals in an east Texas forested recreation area. Additionally, we observed low questing tick density in areas with a history of controlled burns. These results expand knowledge of tick-borne disease ecology in east Texas which can aid in directing future investigative, modeling, and management efforts.
Though it is caused by one tiny tick bite, the symptoms and subsequent fallout of Lyme disease can be devastating for patients. It is one of the most insidious diseases out there, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Roughly 300,000 new Lyme cases are discovered every year according to the CDC (American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and it’s also worth keeping in mind that misdiagnosis rates for the condition are unusually high. Compounding the problem is the fact that chronic Lyme is not a fully legitimate condition in the eyes of most medical bodies, residing in a complicated grey area. A tick bite can also herald other health issues, including co-infections and tick paralysis. These complications can underpin Lyme and compound its effects. But what is tick paralysis? And is tick paralysis a symptom of Lyme disease?
Tick paralysis is transmitted by over 40 species of ticks. It is particularly dangerous for animals, and has caused the death of thousands of livestock over the decades. It is also a threat for domestic animals and can occur in any region where ticks make their home. Fortunately for us, cases are much rarer in humans. The disease usually occurs in children younger than ten, under very specific circumstances. An engorged, egg-laden female tick will produce a neurotoxin in its salivary glands. This neurotoxin is transmitted to the host during feeding, using the saliva of the tick as a conduit. Because such small amounts of saliva make the transition into the host’s bloodstream, research has shown that the most potent form of tick paralysis is transmitted approximately five to seven days after the initial attachment of tick to host.
What’s the connection between tick paralysis and Lyme disease? Read on to find out.
Despite the size of the tick and the tiny volume of saliva being exchanged, symptoms can sometimes be dramatic and concerning. Typical signs and symptoms include ataxia (a neurological sign that causes impaired movement and coordination) and paralysis, which usually starts in the feet or legs and moves upward. Tick paralysis does not include fever or flu-like symptoms, which are common in almost all other tick-borne diseases. The condition can become life-threatening, however, if the paralysis spreads to the torso, as it can hamper crucial organs and muscles, inducing cardiac issues and breathing difficulties. Diagnosis is fairly straightforward: if the individual lives in a tick-heavy area and has sudden-onset ataxia and paralysis in the legs, they should be thoroughly checked for ticks. No individual tests are necessary. So, what to do if you have tick paralysis? Fortunately, treatment is simple. Removing the offending tick will reduce symptoms almost immediately, and there are no residual effects. Patients just have to ensure they remove all parts of the tick from the bite.
This is a crucial difference between tick paralysis and Lyme disease and other co-infections. Tick paralysis can only exist in the presence of the tick, as it is chemically induced by the physical bite. Lyme disease is caused by invading bacteria that the tick actively transfers into the system. Once the bacteria (called Borrelia burgdorferi) invade the host’s system, the residual effects are what form the disease. The tick may be removed successfully when it is noticed, but Lyme disease can still very much be present, as long as it has had time to transfer. Not every tick will cause tick paralysis, and not every tick carries the Lyme-causative bacteria. Unfortunately, though, Lyme disease is much more prevalent than tick paralysis, and is nowhere near as easy to cure.
The first stage of Lyme is known as the acute stage, and it produces symptoms similar to the flu. These are not necessarily severe, meaning many patients underestimate them, or write them off as a mild bout of temporary sickness. The presence of a bullseye rash at the site of the bite is a sure-fire sign of Lyme, but the bite itself is not always noticed by the host. Over a couple of days or weeks, these initial symptoms will clear up, as the disease recedes and lies dormant for a time. Eventually, it will re-emerge as chronic Lyme, which causes a number of generalised, patient-specific symptoms that lend themselves to continued misdiagnosis. At this stage in the disorder, the immune system has kicked into overdrive and is causing symptoms of its own through sustained inflammation. These usually include muscle pains and aches, impaired movement, malaise and chronic fatigue. Bacteria-induced symptoms can include neurological issues and potential cardiac complications.
Aches and pains are a common symptom of chronic Lyme disease.
Treating chronic Lyme is an exceptionally difficult task and requires specialist knowledge from Lyme-literate doctors. Labs like BCA-clinicunderstand that chronic Lyme comes in many varied forms, and that treatment plans have to be tailored to each individual patient. It can be a long, hard road, particularly if additional co-infections are present. These must be addressed and treated simultaneously to ensure there are no residual effects. Fortunately, tick paralysis is not a symptom of Lyme per se, and one is not caused by the other. The two have very different mechanics, with tick paralysis kicking in very soon after a bite, and Lyme disease revealing itself over time. It is, however, vitally important for people to be aware of both of these potentially debilitating disorders, and limit their exposure to ticks when and where they can.
Ticks are masters of breaking down the defenses of their host organism to get a blood meal. They use anesthetics to numb the skin, anticoagulants to keep the blood flowing, and keep the host’s immune system from recognizing them as invaders and kicking them out. And the key to understanding this is in the tick’s saliva. Biochemist and microbiologist Seemay Chou discusses how she milks the saliva from ticks to study what compounds play key parts in these chemical tricks. She also talks about how ticks are able to control the microbes in their saliva.
SciFri took a visit of Chou’s tick lab at UCSF. See photos of the team’s work below…. (See full article & podcast in link above)
“But I am a biologist, so that’s where I started working on ticks and mosquitoes—how to produce a lot of them. Drop them out of airplanes. Everything was very hush-hush, very secret. I’m still leery talking about it, because I think they might put me in jail because I’m delivering secrets. [Laughs.] It was a crazy time.
How do you do a defensive application of ticks and mosquitoes?
We would run all kinds of distribution tests on where these things go when you release them and what were the factors that would cause the migration. Can we drop them out of airplanes and how do we get the bugs to the enemy? That was the thing we did…”
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 