Analysis of zoonotic characters on lyme disease in forests of Chengde

  Objective   Preliminary investigation was conducted to make clear wehether Chengde forests areas was regarded as a natural foci of lyme disease.

  Methods   Rodents and ticks were colected in Chengde forest areas.Some ticks were isolated and cultured Borrelia burgdorferi in BSK medium.Some ticks and rodents were amplified to the fragment of the expected by PCR.Venous blood was drawn from cattle and sheep and human in forest areas.IFA was conducted to test the titer of antibody of the sampled animals.

  Results   I.persulcatus was the most dominant in the ticks collected.One strais I.persulcatus was amplified fragment of the expected size.Through the transformation gene clone and sequence analysized, the sequence amplified were blasted in GeneBank and high homologous to Borrelia afzelli, and it should be regarded as Borrelia afzelli species.The positive rate of residents and cattle and sheep serum antibody was 13.3%, 23.3%, 30% respectively.

  Conclusion   I.persulcatus might be a dominant vector tick species while Lyme spirochete is detected from it.Cattle and sheep in forest areas were important reservoir hosts of lyme disease.The residents in forest areas also had been found infected with thelyme disease spirochetes.The results showed that cheng deregion was very important natural foci of lume disease.