| Summary: | The incidence of arthropod-borne infections is increasing worldwide and Fennoscandia is no exception. In the last decades, infections transmitted by ticks are being diagnosed more frequently in people living in the Nordic countries. Ixodes ricinus, the sheep or castor bean tick, which is the most common tick in North-Western Europe, is widely distributed in Finland. Ixodes ticks are vectors of a broad spectrum of pathogens of medical and veterinary importance, such as Babesia spp., Borrelia spp., Anaplasma phagocytophilum (Ap), Bartonella spp., tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV), and Francisella tularensis. To date, there is limited information regarding the prevalence of many vector borne diseases in companion animals in Finland, and therefore the majority of available data come from human medicine studies. Infections caused by Bartonella species are considered an emerging zoonosis. One peculiarity of this genus of bacteria is its ability to cause long lasting bacteremia in reservoir hosts. Also, it appears that no other infectious agent is transmitted by more vectors. The deer ked, Lipoptena cervi, is an ectoparasite of moose (Alces alces), which carries Bartonella DNA. Deer keds, which are a nuisance for people, can occasionally bite humans and cause deer ked dermatitis. Whether or not the deer ked can successfully transmit bartonellae to ruminants or humans has not been determined. Because many of the arthropod-borne infections that affect dogs can cause serious disease in people, dogs are considered to be effective sentinel animals to assess the risk of human infection. Also, pets represent a large reservoir for human Bartonella infection because most of the species that infect them are zoonotic. The objective of the present research project was threefold: first, to establish the serological and molecular prevalence of selected tick borne diseases in a large group of dogs in Finland; second, to retrospectively compare different diagnostic approaches and clinicopathologic findings in dogs infected with ...
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