Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Jalan Hospital, Sungai Buloh Campus, Sungai Buloh, 47000, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 2 Institute of Medical Molecular Biotechnology, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Jalan Hospital, Sungai Buloh Campus, Sungai Buloh, 47000, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 50603, Malaysia
  • 4 Institute of Pathology, Laboratory and Forensic Medicine (I-PPerForM), Universiti Teknologi MARA, Jalan Hospital, Sungai Buloh Campus, Sungai Buloh, 47000, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 5 Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany
  • 6 Tropical Infectious Diseases Research and Education Centre (TIDREC), Higher Institution of Centre of Excellence (HICoE), Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 50603, Malaysia. vanlun_low@um.edu.my
Vet Res Commun, 2024 Nov 15;49(1):6.
PMID: 39546073 DOI: 10.1007/s11259-024-10591-x

Abstract

An undescribed relapsing fever group Borrelia species was detected in a male Haemaphysalis semermis tick infesting a rural cat in an indigenous population in Pahang National Park, Peninsular Malaysia. The 16 S rRNA gene sequence revealed close similarity of this variant to several undescribed Borrelia species and Borrelia theileri, with genetic distances ranging from 0.58 to 0.72%. Furthermore, the flaB, gyrB, and the concatenated 16 S rRNA + flaB + gyrB sequence analyses demonstrated that this variant is distinctly separated from multiple undescribed Borrelia species, Borrelia miyamotoi, and B. theileri, with genetic distances ranging from 3.41 to 7.00%. This study not only reports the first Borrelia found in H. semermis but also suggests that it forms a distinct clade within the relapsing fever group in Peninsular Malaysia.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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