TY - JOUR
AU - Moraes-Filho, Jonas
AU - Costa, Francisco
AU - Gerardi, Monize
AU - Soares, Herbert
AU - Labruna, Marcelo
T1 - Rickettsia rickettsii Co-feeding Transmission among Amblyomma aureolatum Ticks
T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal
PY - 2018
VL - 24
IS - 11
SP - 2041
SN - 1080-6059
AB - Amblyomma aureolatum ticks are vectors of Rickettsia rickettsii, the etiologic agent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever in Brazil. Maintenance of R. rickettsii in nature depends on horizontal transmission along tick generations. Although such transmission is known to occur when uninfected and infected ticks feed simultaneously on susceptible animals (co-feeding systemic transmission), we investigated co-feeding nonsystemic transmission, which was based on R. rickettsii–infected and –uninfected A. aureolatum ticks feeding simultaneously on guinea pigs immune to R. rickettsii. Our acquisition and transmission infestations demonstrated that horizontal transmission of R. rickettsii by co-feeding ticks on immune hosts with no systemic infection did not occur when uninfected larvae fed distantly from infected nymphs but did occur in a few cases when uninfected larvae fed side-by-side with infected nymphs, suggesting that they shared the same feeding site. The co-feeding nonsystemic transmission type might have no epidemiologic importance for Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
KW - Rickettsia rickettsii
KW - Amblyomma aureolatum
KW - Rocky Mountain spotted fever
KW - cofeeding
KW - Brazil
KW - vector-borne infections
KW - guinea pigs
KW - ticks
KW - bacteria
KW - co-feeding
DO - 10.3201/eid2411.180451
UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/11/18-0451_article
ER - End of Reference