MAJOR ARTICLES AND BRIEF REPORTS - BACTERIA:
Luciana Meirelles Richer,
Dustin Brisson,
Rita Melo,
Richard S. Ostfeld,
Nordin Zeidner,
and Maria Gomes-Solecki
Reservoir Targeted Vaccine Against Borrelia burgdorferi: A New Strategy to Prevent Lyme Disease Transmission J Infect Dis. (2014) 209 (12): 1972-1980 first published online February 11, 2014 doi:10.1093/infdis/jiu005
Abstract
A high prevalence of infection with Borrelia burgdorferi in ixodid ticks is correlated with a high incidence of Lyme disease. The transmission of B. burgdorferi to humans can be disrupted by targeting 2 key elements in its enzootic cycle: the reservoir host and the tick vector. In a prospective 5-year field trial, we show that oral vaccination of wild white-footed mice resulted in outer surface protein A?specific seropositivity that led to reductions of 23% and 76% in the nymphal infection prevalence in a cumulative, time-dependent manner (2 and 5 years, respectively), whereas the proportion of infected ticks recovered from control plots varied randomly over time. Significant decreases in tick infection prevalence were observed within 3 years of vaccine deployment. Implementation of such a long-term public health measure could substantially reduce the risk of human exposure to Lyme disease.
