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Short Report: Density of Lyme Disease Spirochetes within Deer Ticks Collected from Zoonotic Sites
Laura Rosa Brunet
Laura Rosa Brunet
Department of Tropical Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
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Andrew Spielman
Andrew Spielman
Department of Tropical Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
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Sam R. Telford III
Sam R. Telford III
Department of Tropical Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
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We determined whether the density of Lyme disease spirochetes varied between individual host-seeking deer ticks. Guts were dissected from 30 adult Ixodes dammini collected from three intensely zoonotic coastal Massachusetts sites, and the number of Borrelia burgdorferi present was estimated by a modified counting technique using indirect immunofluorescence. A median of 1,925 spirochetes was observed; ticks from the three sites contained similar numbers of spirochetes. No tick contained more than 4,500 spirochetes. Initial experimental reports establishing the efficiency of spirochetal transmission may have been based on ticks with a uniform spirochetal density, and extrapolations from these studies may thus overestimate the infectivity of host-seeking ticks in nature.
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| Past two years | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
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| Abstract Views | 854 | 408 | 14 |
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