Borrelia spirochetes in Russia: Genospecies differentiation by real-time PCR

Spirochetes of the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato complex are the causative agent of Lyme borreliosis which is widespread in Russia. Nowadays, three clinically important B. burgdorferi s.l. genospecies, B. afzelii, B. garinii, B. bavariensis sp. nov., can be found in Russia, as well as B. miyamotoi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ticks and tick-borne diseases 2014-10, Vol.5 (6), p.722-726
Main Authors: Mukhacheva, T A, Kovalev, S Y
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Borrelia - classification
Borrelia - genetics
Borrelia - isolation & purification
DNA Primers - genetics
Female
Genotype
Ixodes - classification
Ixodes - genetics
Ixodes - microbiology
Male
Multilocus Sequence Typing
Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction - methods
Russia
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Summary:Spirochetes of the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato complex are the causative agent of Lyme borreliosis which is widespread in Russia. Nowadays, three clinically important B. burgdorferi s.l. genospecies, B. afzelii, B. garinii, B. bavariensis sp. nov., can be found in Russia, as well as B. miyamotoi, which belongs to the tick-borne relapsing fever group of spirochetes. Several techniques have been developed to differentiate Borrelia genospecies. However, most of them do not allow detection of all of these genospecies simultaneously. Also, no method based on the RT-PCR TaqMan approach has been proposed to differentiate the genetically closely related species B. bavariensis and B. garinii. In the present paper, we investigated two species of ticks, I. persulcatus and I. pavlovskyi (1343 and 92 adults, respectively). Two sets of primers and probes for RT-PCR, with uvrA, glpQ and nifS genes as targets, were designed to detect four Borrelia genospecies in positive samples. The average prevalence of Borrelia sp. was about 40%, with B. afzelii as the most prevalent genospecies. Mixed infections of B. bavariensis and B. garinii were found to be extremely rare. While B. bavariensis was predominant in I. persulcatus, I. pavlovskyi ticks were infected exclusively by B. garinii. The proposed technique proved to be efficient in selection of individual Borrelia species for further genetic analysis, in particular, for multilocus sequence typing. Also, it could be applied for the differentiation of Borrelia genospecies in clinical material.
ISSN:1877-959X
1877-9603
DOI:10.1016/j.ttbdis.2014.05.016