ISDS Annual Conference Proceedings 2019. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 

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Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 11(1): e384, 2019 

 

ISDS 2019 Conference Abstracts 

Epidemiology of SFTSV in Ticks collected from National Park in 
the ROK, 2015-2018 

Yoon kyoung Cho2, jun gu kang2, young sun jo2, Sun-Woo Han2, Weon-Hwa Jheong1, Hye-

Sung Jeong1, Joon-seok Chae2 

1
Environmental Health Research Department, National Institute of Environmental Research, Hwangyeong-ro 42, Seo-gu, Incheon, 22689, Republic of 

Korea., Incheon, Korea (the Republic of), 
2
Laboratoy of Veterinary Internal Medicine, BK21 PLUS program for Creati ve Veterinary Science Research, 

Research Institute for Veterinary Science and College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, The Republic of Korea;, Seoul, 
Korea (the Republic of) 

Objective 

To survey the distribution of Ixodid tick and infection of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV) in natural 
environments from Deogyusan national parks in Korea. 

Introduction 

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an emerging viral disease in East-Asian countries, including China, Japan, 
and the Republic of Korea (ROK). The causative agent of SFTS is the SFTS virus (SFTSV) transmitted by hematophagous ticks. 

Methods 

To investigate the prevalence of SFTSV in the ROK, a total of 4,223 ticks were collected by flagging from Deogyusan National 
Park from 2015 to 2018. One-step reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and nested PCR were used to detect 
SFTSV-specific gene fragment from each ticks. The sequence data were analyzed using Chromas and aligned using CLUSTAL X. 
The phylogenetic analysis was constructed using the neighbor-joining method in MEGA7. 

Results 

Of the collected adult and nymph ticks, Haemaphysalis longicornis (3611, 85.5%) were the most abundant, followed by H. flava 
(502, 11.88%), Ixodes nipponensis (109, 2.5%), and Ixodes ovatus (1, 0.02%). The infection rate of SFTSV in total ticks was 5.8% 
(245/4,223), and the infection rate by year was 3.69% in 2015, 7.97% in 2016, 5.08% in 2017 and 4.68% in 2018. The infection 
rates of SFTSV were getting decreased each year in Deogyusan National Park. In addition, infection rate was higher in spring and 
summer of each season. Phylogenetic analysis was performed and SFTSV sequences obtained in this study were included in 
Korean/Japanese SFTSV clade. 

Conclusions 

In conclusion, we confirmed the sequence of two clades, and it is thought that the epidemiological investigation of SFTSV is 

necessary through further studies. 

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