De Meeûs Thierry, Lorimier Yvan, Renaud François
Centre d'Etude sur le Polymorphisme des Micro-Organismes, UMR CNRS-IRD 9926, Equipe Evolution des Systèmes Symbiotiques, Unite Mixte de Recherches, 911 Avenue d'Agropolis, B.P. 64501, 34394 Montpellier cedex 5, France.
Microbes Infect. 2004 Mar;6(3):299-304. doi: 10.1016/j.micinf.2003.12.005.
The tick Ixodes ricinus is responsible for the transmission and maintenance of a wide variety of pathogenic organisms in the Northern Hemisphere, among which Lyme disease represents a major threat to humans. Despite numerous studies, the epidemiology of the different bacterial species responsible for this disease remains unclear. Recent evidence for a sex-biased genetic structure of its European vector leads us to analyse the consequences of this pattern on Borrelia transmission. Here we show that male and female ticks are not equivalently infected by Borrelia burgdorferi, that Borrelia afzelii affects tick migration capabilities, especially for the most vagile sex (i.e., male) and that Lyme borreliosis agents are consequently vectorised in a much more complex way than usually thought. Such results change the epidemiological perception of Lyme borreliosis and suggest new co-evolutionary pathways between the ticks and the borrelia.
蓖麻硬蜱（Ixodes ricinus）在北半球负责传播和维持多种致病生物，其中莱姆病对人类构成重大威胁。尽管进行了大量研究，但引发该病的不同细菌种类的流行病学仍不清楚。其欧洲传播媒介存在性别偏向性遗传结构的最新证据促使我们分析这种模式对疏螺旋体传播的影响。我们在此表明，雄性和雌性蜱受伯氏疏螺旋体感染的情况并不相同，阿氏疏螺旋体影响蜱的迁移能力，尤其是对迁移性最强的性别（即雄性），因此莱姆病病原体的传播方式比通常认为的要复杂得多。这些结果改变了对莱姆病的流行病学认知，并提示了蜱与疏螺旋体之间新的共同进化途径。
