TDK conference 2013

The aim of the study was to close the academic gap about the infection of Hungarian horses with Borrelia burgdorferi as, to the author’s best knowledge; this is the first report of the serological survey of B. burgdorferi infection of horses in Hungary.

The seroprevalence of B. burgdorferi infection was studied in 324 apparently healthy horses from 27 farms with IFAT. The results indicate that there are many stud farms where one or more horses are infected with this pathogen. Among 27 farms 24 (89%) were found to have seropositive horses. The seroprevalence of borreliosis among the tested stud farms ranged between 0 and 44 %. The overall prevalence of positive samples was 19% (95% CI: 15-24%). No significant association was found between the seropositivity and the age of horses (p=0.54). There was no significant association between the gender and the results of IFAT test (p=0.3902), too.

Based on the findings, the prevalence of equine borreliosis is much higher than expected and it occurs in many regions of the country. Analysing the spatial pattern of the seroprevalence of horses for B. burgdorferi we found that the odds of seropositivity is decreasing from west to east (p=0.019) and from south to north (p=0.0273).