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The most common tick-borne human disease in Norway is Lyme borreliosis. Ticks in Norway also harbour less known disease-causing agents such as CandidatusNeoehrlichia mikurensis, Borrelia miyamotoiand Rickettsia helvetica. However, human infections caused by these pathogens have never been described in Norway. The main aims of the study were to evaluate the contribution of several tick-borne bacterial agents, other than Borrelia burgdorferisensu lato, to zoonotic diseases in Norway and to determine their clinical pictures.

Ticks are important vectors of human pathogens. The knowledge of disease causing agents harboured by ticks in Norway is limited. The focus of this study was (a) to detect the bacteria of medical importance in ticks collected from the vegetation at locations in the southern part of the country and (b) to evaluate a novel commercially available multiplex PCR based method by comparing results with conventional established real-time PCR protocols.