Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Aug 24:6:100212.
doi: 10.1016/j.crpvbd.2024.100212. eCollection 2024.

Tick exposure biomarkers: A One Health approach to new tick surveillance tools

Alexis Dziedziech  1   2 , Eva Krupa  1 , Kristina E M Persson  2   3 , Richard Paul  1 , Sarah Bonnet  1
Affiliations

Tick exposure biomarkers: A One Health approach to new tick surveillance tools

Alexis Dziedziech et al. Curr Res Parasitol Vector Borne Dis. .

Abstract

The spread of tick-borne disease (TBD) is escalating globally, driven by climate change and socio-economic shifts, underlining the urgency to improve surveillance, diagnostics, and control strategies. Ticks can transmit a range of pathogens increasing the risk of transmission of human and veterinary diseases such as Lyme disease, tick-borne encephalitis, theileriosis, anaplasmosis, or Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Surveillance methods play a crucial role in monitoring the spread of tick-borne pathogens (TBP). However, there are shortcomings in the current surveillance methods regarding risks related to ticks. Human-tick encounters offer a novel metric for disease risk assessment, integrating human behavior into traditional surveillance models. However, to more reliably measure tick exposure, a molecular marker is needed. The identification of antibodies against arthropod salivary proteins as biomarkers for vector exposure represents a promising avenue for enhancing existing diagnostic and surveillance metrics. Here we explore how the use of tick saliva biomarkers targeting recombinant proteins and synthetic peptides could significantly improve the assessment of TBD transmission risk and the effectiveness of vector control measures. With focused efforts on creating a biomarker against tick exposure suitable for humans and domestic animals alike, tick surveillance, diagnosis and control would be more achievable and aid in reducing the mounting threat of TBP through a One Health lens.

Keywords: Antigenic peptides; Biomarker discovery; Biomarkers; Immunogenic peptides; Tick exposure; Tick saliva.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image 1
Graphical abstract
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Abbas M.N., Jmel M.A., Mekki I., Dijkgraaf I., Kotsyfakis M. Recent advances in tick antigen discovery and anti-tick vaccine development. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2023;24:4969. doi: 10.3390/ijms24054969. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Aguilar-Montes de Oca S., Montes-de-Oca-Jiménez R., Carlos Vázquez-Chagoyán J., Barbabosa-Pliego A., Eliana Rivadeneira-Barreiro P., Zambrano-Rodríguez C., P The use of peptides in veterinary serodiagnosis of infectious diseases: A review. Vet. Sci. 2022;9:561. doi: 10.3390/vetsci9100561. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ahmad A., Imran M., Ahsan H. Biomarkers as biomedical bioindicators: Approaches and techniques for the detection, analysis, and validation of novel biomarkers of diseases. Pharmaceutics. 2023;15:1630. doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics15061630. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alarcon-Chaidez F., Ryan R., Wikel S., Dardick K., Lawler C., Foppa I.M., et al. Confirmation of tick bite by detection of antibody to Ixodes calreticulin salivary protein. Clin. Vaccine Immunol. 2006;13:1217–1222. doi: 10.1128/CVI.00201-06. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ali A., Zeb I., Alouffi A., Zahid H., Almutairi M.M., Ayed Alshammari F., et al. Host immune responses to salivary components - a critical facet of tick-host interactions. Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol. 2022;12 doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.809052. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources