Study to determine infection dynamics of emerging tick-borne virus

Tick-borne infections can lead to serious illnesses – and even death – in people and pets. To create effective treatments for these diseases, scientists first must figure out the basic infection biology of the ticks they study.

Researchers at the University of South Alabama plan to use a $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to do just that, laying the groundwork for developing a way to stop transmission of an emerging tick-borne virus native to Asia.

Meghan Hermance, Ph.D., an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the Whiddon College of Medicine, received the five-year award to study the infection dynamics of a tick-borne bunyavirus called severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus or SFTSV. Thrombocytopenia means low platelet count.

An emerging tick-borne disease caused by the bunyavirus, SFTSV is transmitted by the Haemaphysalis longicornis tick, which recently spread to the United States and beyond.

Because of its ability to cause hemorrhagic disease and lack of specific treatment strategies, SFTSV is considered a priority infectious disease by the World Health Organization.

“One major focus of this research is to understand how the bunyavirus survives the molting process between tick life stages and the timeline during which the virus disseminates between organs within the tick body,” Hermance said. “In other words, we want to determine where the virus resides in the tick body before it ends up in the tick salivary glands and ultimately gets transmitted to the next host the tick feeds on.”

A second focus of the research is to define the minimum amount of time an infected tick needs to feed in order to transmit the bunyavirus to a vertebrate host, Hermance said.