Gomes-Solecki Maria
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Biochemistry, University of Tennessee Health Science Center Memphis, TN, USA.
Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2014 Sep 26;4:136. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2014.00136. eCollection 2014.
Control strategies are especially challenging for microbial diseases caused by pathogens that persist in wildlife reservoirs and use arthropod vectors to cycle amongst those species. One of the most relevant illnesses that pose a direct human health risk is Lyme disease; in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently revised the probable number of cases by 10-fold, to 300,000 cases per year. Caused by Borrelia burgdorferi, Lyme disease can affect the nervous system, joints and heart. No human vaccine is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In addition to novel human vaccines, new strategies for prevention of Lyme disease consist of pest management interventions, vector-targeted vaccines and reservoir-targeted vaccines. However, even human vaccines can not prevent Lyme disease expansion into other geographical areas. The other strategies aim at reducing tick density and at disrupting the transmission of B. burgdorferi by targeting one or more key elements that maintain the enzootic cycle: the reservoir host and/or the tick vector. Here, I provide a brief overview of the application of an OspA-based wildlife reservoir targeted vaccine aimed at reducing transmission of B. burgdorferi and present it as a strategy for reducing Lyme disease risk to humans.
对于由病原体引起的微生物疾病而言，控制策略极具挑战性，这些病原体在野生动物宿主中长期存在，并利用节肢动物媒介在这些物种之间循环传播。对人类健康构成直接风险的最相关疾病之一是莱姆病；在美国，疾病控制与预防中心最近将可能的病例数修订为原来的10倍，即每年30万例。莱姆病由伯氏疏螺旋体引起，可影响神经系统、关节和心脏。美国食品药品监督管理局未批准任何人类疫苗。除了新型人类疫苗外，预防莱姆病的新策略还包括害虫管理干预措施、针对媒介的疫苗和针对宿主的疫苗。然而，即使是人类疫苗也无法阻止莱姆病向其他地理区域蔓延。其他策略旨在通过针对维持动物疫源地循环的一个或多个关键要素（宿主和/或蜱虫媒介）来降低蜱虫密度，并阻断伯氏疏螺旋体的传播。在此，我简要概述一种基于OspA的针对野生动物宿主的疫苗的应用，该疫苗旨在减少伯氏疏螺旋体的传播，并将其作为降低人类莱姆病风险的一种策略。
