Contrasting pathogen prevalence between tick and dog populations at Chornobyl.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The 1986 disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant released massive amounts of radioactive material into the local environment. In addition to radiation, remediation efforts and abandonment of military-industrial complexes contributed to contamination with heavy metals, organics, pesticides and other toxic chemicals. Numerous studies have evaluated the effects of this contamination on the local ecology. However, few studies have reported the effect of this contamination on vector-borne pathogens and their hosts. In this manuscript, we characterize tick-borne pathogen presence at two sample locations within the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, one at the Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) and another 16 km away in Chornobyl City (CC).

Methods

Ticks and whole-blood samples were

SUBMITTER: Dillon MN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11571660 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature