Investigation of tick species in risky areas for crimean congo hemorrhagic fever in thrace and determination of CCHF viruses in Hyalomma marginatum

Ticks are ectoparasitic arthropods, which have the ability to suck blood in all active periods for sustain of vital activities from warm or cold-blooded animals, and have the ability to transmit many diseases during this process. Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is one of the most important disease transmited by ticks while sucking blood. Although there are many tick types identified on the Earth related to vectors of related disease; the only species confirmed as the responsible for human infection of CCHF in Turkey is Hyalomma marginatum. In this thesis, it is aimed to investigate the tick species located on the slopes of the Yıldız Mountains, which is an important region of Trakya in terms of CCHF, and to investigate the presence of CCHF viruses in H. marginatum which is the CCHF vector. In this thesis, hungry ticks were collected from the important regions of Trakya in terms of CCHF, species were identified and viral RNA extraction was performed on selected 200 adult H. marginatum from collected ticks. The obtained RNAs were reacted with CCHF specific primers to polymerase chain reaction. 9 out of the positive samples were selected and most relative virüs strains of samples were determinated by sequence analysis. In the study Dermacentor marginatus, Dermacentor sp. larvae, Hyalomma aegyptium, Hyalomma marginatum, Haemaphysalis inermis, Haemaphysalis parva, Haemaphysalis punctata, Haemaphysalis sp. nimf, Ixodes acuminatus, Ixodes ricinus, Ixodes sp. nimf, Rhipicephalus bursa, Rhipicephalus turanicus species were determined. As the result of screening of 200 H. marginatum adults for CCHF virus, 51.5% of the samples was determined as positive. According to the results of the sequence analysis, the virus strains responsible for the disease in the region were generally similar to 99% of the Kosovo-Hoti strain, and only one strain was similar to the 98% of Stavropol isolate.