afzelii R losea 246 D 107,68,51,20 Discussion It has been report

afzelii R. losea 246 D 107,68,51,20 Discussion It has been reported that the primary reservoir hosts in hyperendemic foci of the spirochete in the northeastern and southwestern China are Apodemus

agrarius and Clethrionomys rufocanus [9]. However, information concerning the epidemic status of the disease in western part of China is inadequate. Gansu Province is located in northwestern China, in the midway along the old Silk Road, and has been identified as natural focus of Lyme disease as early as in 1994 [10, 11]. In our study see more we identified two rodent species, A. agrarius and R. losea harbored B. C646 concentration burgdorferii in nature. The high prevalence of B. burgdorferi s.l. infection in rodents indicates that an enzootic transmission cycle of B.burgdorferi s.l. still exist. Therefore it is important to identify

the main local vector tick species responsible for transmission of the Lyme spirochete to humans in future work. To identify the main reservoir host species in each particular geographic area is important, because the reservoir host species compositon may affect genospecies of B. burgdorferi s.l. There are several common characteristics for an efficient reservoir hosts of B. burgdorferi s.l. They are abundant in nature, they could naturally infected the B. burgdorferi s.l. and remain infective for long periods of time, often for life [12]. In our study we found A. agrarius was one of most frequently trapped rodent species and field survey showed the number of A. agrarius was huge, they could easily be observed in field and in home. The strains selleck chemical were isolated not only from adult A. agrarius but from immature A. agrarius, the data suggested the role of A. agrarius as the primary reservoir of B. burgdorferi s.l. in Gansu Province. As we have mentioned above that A. agrarius are distributed over an extensive area in mainland China, and are known selleckchem to be major reservoir host for B. burgdorferi s.l. in China [9]. Combing these data make us believe that A. agrarius is a major reservoir host in Gansu Province. One of the remarkable discoveries of this research was that we firstly isolated B. burgdorferi s.l. from R. losea, which showed the potential role

of R. losea in Lyme disease epidemiology in Gansu Province. In fact, previous studies have showed the prevalence of B. burgdorferi in R. losea (8%) collected in south-east China [13]. However, due to the limited number of R. losea in the present study, it is still too early to state that R. losea be a reservoir host of B. burgdorferi s.l.. It is also unclear whether this rodent could survive long enough for ticks feeding or the agent in rodent remain infectious for ticks. More samples should be collected and the role of this rodent as a source of B. burgdorferi s.l. infection for immature ticks should be documented in the future. In our study three isolates from A. agrarius were identified as B. garinii and the isolate from R. losea was identified as B.

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