Relevance of Spatial and Temporal Trends in Nymphal Tick Density and Infection Prevalence for Public Health and Surveillance Practice in Long-Term Endemic Areas: A Case Study in Monmouth County, NJ

Abstract

Tick-borne diseases are a growing public health problem in the United States, and the US northeast has reported consistently high case rates for decades. Monmouth County, New Jersey, was one of the earliest jurisdictions to report Lyme disease cases in 1979 and reports several hundred cases per year nearly 40 yr later. In the time since, however, tick-borne health risks have expanded far beyond Lyme disease to include a variety of other bacterial pathogens and viruses, and additional vectors, necessitating a continually evolving approach to tick surveillance. In 2017, Monmouth County initiated an active surveillance program targeting sites across three ecological regions for collection of Ixodes scapularis Say (Acari: Ixodidae) and Amblyomma americanum L. (Acari: Ixodidae) as well as testing via qPCR for associated bacterial pathogens. During the first five years of this program (2017–2021), we report high levels of spatiotemporal variability in nymphal density and infection prevalence in both species, limiting the granularity with which human risk can be predicted from acarological data. Nonetheless, broader patterns emerged, including an ongoing trend of A. americanum dominance, risks posed by Borrelia miyamotoi, and the frequency of coinfected ticks. We present some of the first county-level, systematic surveillance of nymphal A. americanum density and infection prevalence in the northeastern US. We also documented a temporary decline in Borrelia burgdorferi that could relate to unmeasured trends in reservoir host populations. We discuss the implications of our findings for tick-borne disease ecology, public health communication, and tick surveillance strategies in endemic areas.

[Retracted] Storage Method for Medical and Health Big Data Based on Distributed Sensor Network

“…The huge amount of medical and health data contains great value. Building a medical and health data storage platform to realize unified storage and retrieval of data is conducive to sharing data among different medical and health institutions [1][2][3]. Moreover, the addition of data analysis service function on the platform is conducive to the development of auxiliary diagnosis and treatment and disease prediction technology.…”

Lone star ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) infected with Bourbon virus in New Jersey, USA

“…Of note, these 3 samples had previously tested negative for Ehrlichia chaffeensis , E. ewingii , and Rickettsia spp. including Rickettsia amblyommatis (Jordan et al 2022).…”

“…Ticks were collected with a 1 m 2 sailcloth drag worked along five 100 m transects at 12 sites as part of a routine active surveillance program previously described (Jordan et al 2022). Sampling in May and June of 2021 targeted nymphal A. americanum.…”

“…RNA and DNA from individual ticks were extracted in 96-well plates with Qiagen DNeasy 96 Blood & Tissue Kits (Qiagen Inc, Valencia, CA) as previously described (Egizi et al 2020, Jordan et al 2022). This protocol co-elutes RNA and DNA unless otherwise treated (e.g., with RNase or DNase).…”

“…Historically an early focus of Lyme disease (Bowen et al 1984), the rising importance of Amblyomma americanum (Cooley & Kohls) became evident during the 2000s (Schulze et al 2001, 2005, 2006, Mixson et al 2006). By 2012, A. americanum overtook Ixodes scapularis (Say) as the tick most commonly encountered by county residents (Jordan and Egizi 2019) and field populations of I. scapularis have declined in recent years (Jordan et al 2022). This shift places an increasing emphasis on health risks posed by A. americanum (Egizi et al 2017, 2020) as its geographic distribution expands across the Northeast (Molaei et al 2019).…”