Ticks co-infection [12–18], and co-transmission of pathogens [19–28] might have important potential implications and hence be highly relevant to public health [29]. Indeed co-infection in humans and animals might enhance disease severity as has been reported for concurrent babesiosis and Lyme disease [30,31], and may also have significant consequences in terms of tick-borne disease treatment and diagnosis
Among all infected ticks (120/267, 45% of all collected ticks) half were found to be co-infected (54 co-infected ticks out of 120 infected ticks) (Fig 3A): 9% carried DNA from two pathogen species, 6.7% carried DNA from three pathogens, 1.9% carried DNA from four pathogens, and 0.75% carried DNA from five different pathogens. When performing statistical analyses of bacterial associations, where only the five Borrelia species were included, five combinations were significant
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/arti ... td.0004539
Henriëtte