Various small mammal hosts are involved in the transmission cycle of zoonotic Anaplasma phagocytophilum in Southeastern Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA) is a tick-borne disease emerging in North America, caused by the zoonotic variant Ap-ha (human active) of the bacterium Anaplasma phagocytophilum. This research aimed to understand the reservoir competency of small mammals for Ap-ha in the province of Québec, Canada. To achieve this aim, wild small mammals were sampled from June to August in 2022 and 2023 and tested for Ap and its variants (Ap-ha, Ap-v1) using qPCR targeting the msp2 and 16S genes. In total, 547 small mammals from nine different taxa were live captured across two years. Nearly half (48.2 %) of small mammals carried at least one Ixodes scapularis tick larva and 29.3 % carried at least one I. scapularis nymph. The odds of Ap infection were three times higher in eastern chipmunks (OR = 2.98, p < 0.05) and five times lower in red squirrels (OR = 0.21, p < 0.01) when compared to Peromyscus spp. mice. When infected, Peromyscus mice and eastern chipmunks transmitted the infection on average to 6.8 % (CI95: 24.9-48.7) and 52.9 % (CI95: 16.7-89.1) of feeding larvae, respectively. An Ap variant could be identified in 90 % (109/121) of infected small mammals, all of which were the Ap-ha strain. In conclusion, eastern chipmunks and Peromyscus mice should be considered as reservoir hosts contributing to the transmission and emergence of anaplasmosis in Canada. This study also confirms the circulation of the Ap-ha variant within host and tick communities in Southeastern Canada.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".