Tickborne intracellular bacterial pathogens including Anaplasma, Coxiella burnetti, Ehrlichia, and Rickettsia cause emerging infectious diseases worldwide. PCR was used to amplify the genes of these pathogens in Haemaphysalis flava ticks collected from hedgehogs in Central China. Among 125 samples including 20 egg batches, 24 engorged females, and 81 molted male and female adult ticks, the DNA sequences and phylogenetic analysis showed that the minimum infection rate of the ticks was 4% (5/125) for A. bovis, 3.2% (4/125) for C. burnetti, 9.6%, (12/125) for E. ewingii, and 5.6% for Rickettsia including R.japonica (3.2%, 4/125) and R. raoultii (2.4%, 3/125), respectively. The prevalence of these pathogens was significantly higher in dead engorged females (83.3%, 20/24) than in eggs (5%, 1/20) and molted ticks (8.6%, 7/81). Our study indicated that H. flava ticks could be infected with multiple species of tickborne pathogens including Anaplasma, C. burnetti, Ehrlichia, and Rickettsia in Central China, and the prevalence of these pathogens was reduced during transovarial and transstadial transmission in ticks, suggesting that ticks may not be real reservoirs but only vectors for these tickborne pathogens.

Currently, Zika virus (ZIKV) is spreading across the world and no ZIKV infection cases have ever been reported in China. Here, we aimed to determine whether ZIKV infection exists in China. Blood samples of 273 healthy individuals were collected from Nanning City, Guangxi Province, China in March 2019. We found that 9.5% (26/273) and 1.8% (5/273) of healthy persons were positive to ZIKV total antibody (IgG and/or IgM) IgM antibody, respectively. All ZIKV positive plasma samples were negative to Dengue virus and West Nile virus. Among the ZIKV antibody positive plasma samples, 65.4% (17/26) exhibited neutralizing activity to ZIKV. Followed up studies showed that none had clinical symptoms of ZIKV infection and oversea experience. Together, our study indicates that endemic ZIKV infections emerge in China, which not only suggested that ZIKV posed a potential threat to public health in China, but also expand the ZIKV epidemic areas in East and Southeast Asia.

Bats can harbor zoonotic pathogens causing emerging infectious diseases, but their status as hosts for bacteria is limited. We aimed to investigate the distribution, prevalence and genetic diversity of Borrelia in bats and bat ticks in Hubei Province, China, which will give us a better understanding of the risk of Borrelia infection posed by bats and their ticks. During 2018–2020, 403 bats were captured from caves in Hubei Province, China, 2 bats were PCR-positive for Borrelia. Sequence analysis of rrs, flaB and glpQ genes of positive samples showed 99.55%-100% similarity to Candidatus Borrelia fainii, a novel human-pathogenic relapsing fever Borrelia species recently reported in Zambia, Africa and Eastern China, which was clustered together with relapsing fever Borrelia species traditionally reported only in the New World. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and pairwise genetic distances further confirmed the Borrelia species in the bats from Central China as Candidatus Borrelia fainii. No Borrelia DNA was detected in ticks collected from bats. The detection of this human-pathogenic relapsing fever Borrelia in bats suggests a wide distribution of this novel relapsing fever Borrelia species in China, which may pose a threat to public health in China.

Snakes are popular as food and traditional medicine in China. However, information about parasitic and bacterial infections in snakes from China is scarce. We investigated the prevalence of selected zoonotic agents including Cryptosporidium, Hepatozoon and Spirometra, in snakes in central China from June to October in 2018 by PCR amplification using parasite-specific primers. PCR amplification and DNA sequencing showed that 10.1% (15/149) of snakes were positive for Cryptosporidium spp., while 2.7% (4/149) were positive for Hepatozoon. Additionally, we found 36.9% (55/149) of snakes were infected with Spirometra erinaceieuropaei. The spargana burden per infected snake ranged from 1 to 26. BLAST and phylogenetic analysis of small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU rRNA) gene and 60-kDa glycoprotein (gp60) gene showed that the parasites belonged to Cryptosporidium parvum genotype IIdA15G1, C. baileyi, C. serpentis and a Hepatozoon species. We conclude that intensively farmed snakes excrete C. parvum and C. baileyi oocysts due to ingestion of infected feeder animals, and that wild snakes in central China were commonly infected with S. erinaceieuropaei, suggesting that eating improperly cooked snakes could be risky to human health.

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