Wolbachia

[Henriëtte]

Parasites of vectors - Ixodiphages hookeri and it's Wolbachia symbionts in ticks in the Netherlands;

Ixodiphagus hookeri is a parasitic wasp of ixodid ticks around the world. It has been studied as a potential bio-control agent for several tick species. We suspected that the presence of Wolbachia infected I. hookeri eggs in ticks is responsible for incidental detection of Wolbachia DNA in tick samples.

This is the first reported case of I. hookeri in the Netherlands. Furthermore I. hookeri harbours Wolbachia species and is broadly distributed in the Netherlands. While detection of Wolbachia DNA in ticks might often be due to parasitism with this wasp, other sources of Wolbachia DNA in ticks might exist as well.

https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentr ... 3305-4-228

Henriëtte

[Henriëtte]

High levels of co-infection with pathogens and symbionts in ticks from the Ardennes;
/u]

The researchers collected 267 adult female ticks between May and August 2012 from an 80 km transect in the French Ardennes. Samples were taken from 6 forested areas and 3 with hedge networks. RNA and DNA were extracted from all ticks and high-throughput screening carried out for identification of both pathogens and symbionts. The researchers looked for the presence of DNA from 37 different species of bacteria, parasites and viruses and four bacterial symbionts ([u]Wolbachia sp, Midichloria mitochondrii, Spiroplasma spp. and Acinetobacter spp.)
Of the 267 individually analyzed female ticks 45% were infected with at least 1 pathogen. A further 45% of these (54 ticks) were infected with more than one species. Of the 255 specimens analyzed for symbiotic bacterial species 100% contained DNA from M. mitochondrii, with 76%, 65% and 20% containing DNA from Spiroplasma, Acinetobacter and Wolbachia respectively. When both pathogens and symbionts were taken into account, some ticks contained up to 8 micro-organisms.

The possibility of co-infection has implications for treatment strategies, e.g antibiotics which may clear a bacterial infection will not help with a co-infected virus.
The study raises awareness of the issue of co-infection of tick-borne diseases. The high level of co-infection should be a consideration for public health measures, and the interaction between symbionts and pathogens inside the tick is an important area for continued biological study.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-03- ... ennes.html

Henriëtte

[Henriëtte]

Wolbachia;

Wolbachia is a genus of Gram-negative bacteria which infects arthropod species, including a high proportion of insects, but also some nematodes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia

Henriëtte

[Henriëtte]

Stal dit virus Dna van een zwarte weduwe?

Wolbachia is een van de meest succesvolle bacteriën ter wereld. Ze houdt zich schuil in ongeveer de helft van de insecten, spinnen en andere geleedpotigen, de meest talrijke en diverse dierengroep op aarde. De bacterie is op zich al interessant, omwille van de willekeur waarmee ze toeslaat. Soms doodt ze haar gastheer, soms verandert ze een mannetje in een vrouwtje. Maar soms verschaft ze ook voordelen, zoals vitamines of weerstand tegen virussen.
Alle virussen zijn meesters in het binnendringen in cellen, maar WO slaagt erin door een bacteriële én een dierlijke cel te breken
Alsof dat nog niet intrigerend genoeg is, wordt deze meesterinfecteerder op zijn beurt geïnfecteerd door het virus WO, dat zo mogelijk nog mysterieuzer is

https://www.demorgen.be/wetenschap/wete ... -b4df962e/

Henriëtte

[Henriëtte]

Wolbachia and the biology of host pathogen interactions;

Wolbachia are closely related to Rickettsia, a family of tick-borne pathogens that cause disease, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever Wolbachia have also been linked to disease via their symbiotic relationship with pathogenic nematodes, such as Brugia malayi, known for causing elephantiasis, and Onchocerca volvulus, associated with the condition Onchocerciasis (river blindness. Recent evidence has implicated Wolbachia directly as the cause of ocular inflammation associated with river blindness, a condition that affects millions of people worldwide.� This discovery has led to the realization that antibiotic therapy is an effective means of combating these neglected diseases.� Consequently there is a great need to identify new potent compounds that specifically target Wolbachia.� To this end, we have a developed high-throughput cell-based screen to identify new anti-Wolbachia drugs

http://sullivan.mcdb.ucsc.edu/research-1.html

Henriëtte

[Henriëtte]

How to cure the Diseases;

Don’t go after the parasitic worms that cause the diseases; go after the bacteria that those worms depend on.

The answer involves a bacterium called Wolbachia, which colonizes the cells of up to 40 percent of insect species. Since its hosts are themselves the most numerous animals on the planet, Wolbachia can lay a strong claim to being one of Earth’s most successful bacteria. And beyond its normal insect hosts, it also lives in filarial nematodes.

When the worms die, they release their Wolbachia into their hosts. And while these bacteria can’t infect us, they can trigger inflammation. Mark Taylor from the University of Liverpool thinks that it’s the combination of immune responses against the worms and their bacteria that leads to the intense symptoms of filarial diseases.
And unfortunately, this means that killing the worms would make everything much worse, because they’d release all their Wolbachia in their death throes. “You get exploding nodules, and scrotal inflammation,” he told me. “You don’t want that. You want to kill the worms slowly, and it’s hard to think how you’d do that with an anti-nematode drug.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... ia/409306/

Henriëtte

[Henriëtte]

Wolbachia;

Wolbachia is a genus of gram-negative bacteria that infects arthropod species, including a high proportion of insects, and also some nematodes.[4] It is one of the most common parasitic microbes and is possibly the most common reproductive parasite in the biosphere. Its interactions with its hosts are often complex

Applications to human-related infections
Wolbachia causing disease
Outside of insects, Wolbachia infects a variety of isopod species, spiders, mites, and many species of filarial nematodes (a type of parasitic worm), including those causing onchocerciasis (river blindness) and elephantiasis in humans, as well as heartworms in dogs. Not only are these disease-causing filarial worms infected with Wolbachia, but Wolbachia also seems to play an inordinate role in these diseases. A large part of the pathogenicity of filarial nematodes is due to host immune response toward their Wolbachia. Elimination of Wolbachia from filarial nematodes generally results in either death or sterility of the nematode.[45] Consequently, current strategies for control of filarial nematode diseases include elimination of their symbiotic Wolbachia via the simple doxycycline antibiotic, rather than directly killing the nematode with far more toxic antinematode medications.[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia

Henriëtte

[Henriëtte]

Endosymbionts of Ticks and Their Relationship to Wolbachiaspp.and Tick-Borne Pathogens of Humans and Animals;

Ticks also harbor unidentified non-pathogenic rickettsia- and wolbachia-like bacteria which arepossibly mutualistic endosymbionts (11, 17). Numerous reportshave been published on the morphological appearance anddistribution of symbionts in various tick species (17). To date,the relationship of the endosymbionts to tick-borne pathogenshas been examined mainly by electron microscopy (12, 17–19,25, 35, 45, 54, 55). The symbionts, usually localized in theMalpighian tubules and/or ovaries, have been identified as being rickettsiae or wolbachiae (

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... 633926.pdf

Henriëtte

[Henriëtte]

Detection of Wolbachia in the Tick Ixodes ricinus is Due to the Presence of the Hymenoptera Endoparasitoid Ixodiphagus hookeri;

ticks are also the hosts for symbiotic bacteria whose impact on tick biology is poorly known. Among these, the bacterium Wolbachia pipientis has already been reported associated with Ixodes ricinus and other tick species. However, the origins of Wolbachia in ticks and their consequences on tick biology

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0030692

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