The study detected Heartland virus in three different specimen samples of lone star ticks - collected in different locations and at different times - and including both the nymph and adult stages of the ticks. “They represent a large threat to human health that a lot of people may not realize.” Bellman is an MD/PhD student in Emory’s School of Medicine and Rollins School of Public Health. “Ticks are both fascinating and terrifying,” says study co-author Steph Bellman, shown in the field with a vial of ticks. Co-author Anne Piantadosi, assistant professor in Emory School of Medicine’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, conducted the genetic analyses. Yamila Romer, a former post-doctoral fellow in the Vazquez-Prokopec lab, is first author of the new paper. Vazquez-Prokopec is a leading expert in vector-borne diseases - infections transmitted from one organism to another by the bite of a vector, such as a tick or mosquito. “We’re trying to get ahead of this virus by learning everything that we can about it before it potentially becomes a bigger problem.” “Heartland is an emerging infectious disease that is not well understood,” says Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, associate professor in Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences and senior author of the study. The research adds new evidence for how the tick-borne Heartland virus, first identified in Missouri in 2009, may evolve and spread geographically and from one organism to another. The journal Emerging Infectious Diseases published the findings, which include a genetic analysis of the virus samples, isolated from ticks collected in central Georgia. Heartland virus is circulating in lone star ticks in Georgia, scientists at Emory University have found, confirming active transmission of the virus within the state.
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