Until now, we knew that ticks primarily transmit two pathogens to humans in Switzerland: the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi - which causes borreliosis - and the early-summer-meningoencephalitis virus, which can cause cerebral inflammation. Now, microbiologists from the University of Zurich confirm the existence of another tick disease in Switzerland - neoehrlichiosis.
The pathogenic bacteria Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis was first discovered in ticks and rodents in Europe and Asia in 1999. In 2010, Head of Molecular Diagnostics at the Institute of Medical Microbiology Guido Bloemberg and colleagues from Sweden and Germany diagnosed the world's first infections in humans and dubbed the disease "neoehrlichiosis", by detection of the bacterium in the patients blood. Two more cases were identified at the University of Zurich's Institute of Medical Microbiology in October 2011 and January 2012. So far, a total of eight patients have been described in Europe, three of whom come from the Zurich area. They suffered from relapsing fevers of up to 40 degrees, weight loss and general malaise.
Greater Zurich region risk area