Treatment of tick-borne diseases: Current status, challenges, and global perspectives

Tick-borne diseases are considered one of the most serious health problems affecting animals and humans and causing great economic losses worldwide. Ticks can transmit a wide variety of pathogens to vertebrates including viruses, bacteria and protozoa.
Fighting against such diseases is done mainly at three levels: (i) vaccination, (ii) administration of antiparasitic drugs, and (iii) control of the transmitted vectors. Many tick-borne diseases have a huge economic impact in several countries and there are very few drug candidates in the pipeline. Searching for novel drugs against tick-borne diseases remains indispensable due to the emergence and spreading of resistant parasites against the very limited number of currently used drugs. In a similar way, several of the currently used drugs have exhibited toxicity to the host and possess serious side effects and a prolonged time for residue depletion from animal tissues.

Therefore, an innovative approach needs to be adopted to discover new effective drugs against tick-borne diseases. In this regard, a search inside the chemical libraries for novel potent candidates may help to populate this currently empty drug pipeline. Furthermore, novel drugs against tick-borne diseases with specified targets need to be identified and exploited.

This Research Topic aims to assess animal tick-borne diseases, current and emerging treatments, drug discovery, and analysis of potential drug targets. We welcome original research and review articles assessing, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Discovery of novel, effective and safe antiparasitic drugs for tick-borne diseases affecting animals.
• Investigations whether the pressures caused by currently used drugs or recently identified drugs against tick-borne diseases could induce parasite resistance.
• Searching for possible drugs against tick-borne disease targets and pathways.

Keywords: Tick-borne Diseases, Vaccination, Antiparasitic Drugs, Transmitted Vectors, Parasite Resistance

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.