Co-feeding Transmission and Its Contribution to the Perpetuation of the Lyme Disease Spirochete Borrelia afzelii (In Reply)

摘要

In Reply: Richter et al. (1) haveasked an important question: To whatextent does the transmission of non-systemic infections of the Lyme borre-liosis spirochete (Borrelia afzelii)between co-feeding nymphal and lar-val Ixodes ricinus ticks apply to natu-ral tick infestations on wild rodents.The authors conclude that the trans-mission of infections 3 days after inoc-ulation by tick bite is >100 times lessefficient than the transmission of infec-tions that have lasted at least 14 days.That answer depends on a critical cal-culation based on experimental resultscombined with field observations.Unfortunately, this calculation is incor-rect by a factor of approximately 20