Prevalence ofBorrelia burgdorferiSensu Lato Genospecies inIxodes ricinusTicks in Europe: a Metaanalysis

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Abstract
In Europe,Borrelia burgdorferigenospecies causing Lyme borreliosis are mainly transmitted by the tickIxodes ricinus. Since its discovery,B. burgdorferihas been the subject of many epidemiological studies to determine its prevalence and the distribution of the different genospecies in ticks. In the current study we systematically reviewed the literature on epidemiological studies ofI. ricinusticks infected withB. burgdorferisensu lato. A total of 1,186 abstracts in English published from 1984 to 2003 were identified by a PubMed keyword search and from the compiled article references. A multistep filter process was used to select relevant articles; 110 articles from 24 countries contained data on the rates of infection ofI. ricinuswithBorreliain Europe (112,579 ticks), and 44 articles from 21 countries included species-specific analyses (3,273 positive ticks). These data were used to evaluate the overall rate of infection ofI. ricinuswithBorreliagenospecies, regional distributions within Europe, and changes over time, as well as the influence of different detection methods on the infection rate. While the infection rate was significantly higher in adults (18.6%) than in nymphs (10.1%), no effect of detection method, tick gender, or collection period (1986 to 1993 versus 1994 to 2002) was found. The highest rates of infection ofI. ricinuswere found in countries in central Europe.B. afzeliiandB. gariniiare the most commonBorreliaspecies, but the distribution of genospecies seems to vary in different regions in Europe. The most frequent coinfection byBorreliaspecies was found forB. gariniiandB. valaisiana.

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