Abstract
Leptospirosis, a disease more common in the tropics, can cause a life-threatening multisystemic syndrome in humans and animals. Immunity, whether natural or vaccine-induced, is serogroup-specific with the infecting serovars varying according to geographical locality. In South Africa, in spite of the fact that the bacterin vaccine for some Leptospira serovars is often used, there is no recent information on the incidence of canine leptospirosis as well as the infecting serovar/s. The aim of this study, which was undertaken on sera collected in 2008 and 2009 from both strays and owned dogs predominantly in the coastal regions of South Africa, was to determine the presence of leptospiral antibodies to 15 serovars known to infect dogs. Of the 530 samples tested, 25 tested positive to 7 different serovars with the microscopic agglutination test (MAT). Nine of the 25 samples tested positive to more than one serovar. The 2 serovars most frequently represented were Canicola, which reacted to 17 sera, and Pyrogenes, which reacted to 10 sera. Currently the only vaccines available in South Africa in different combinations contain serovars Canicola, Icterohaemorrhagiae, Pomona and Grippotyphosa. The results showed that the use of vaccines containing serovar Canicola is still justifiable in certain regions of the country. However, the presence of antibodies to serovar Pyrogenes in several dogs, pending a broader investigation, indicates that this serovar should also be included in the range of Leptospira vaccines for use in South Africa.
Highlights
Clinical cases of canine leptospirosis have historically been associated with Leptospira serovar Icterohaemorrhagiae, where rats act as the primary reservoir host and serovar Canicola where dogs are the maintenance host
Using the Pearson 2 × 2 chi-square test, it was found at a 95 % confidence level that stray dogs were more 4.09 times more likely to have leptospiral antibodies than owned dogs (P = 0.0017). The aim of this project was to collect samples from dogs from various regions in the country, record the relevant data pertaining to each sample and test the samples for antibodies against a variety of Leptospira serovars
A sample bias was included in that coastal regions were over-represented due to the fact that leptospirosis is known to be more common in warm, wet areas such as are found along the South African coast[14]
Summary
Clinical cases of canine leptospirosis have historically been associated with Leptospira serovar Icterohaemorrhagiae, where rats act as the primary reservoir host and serovar Canicola where dogs are the maintenance host. Sera collected from stray dogs were tested for serovars Canicola, Copenhageni, Grippotyphosa, Hardjo, Mini, Pomona, Pyrogenes and Tarassovi. It was suggested that leptospirosis is not of clinical significance in the Pretoria area, possibly as a result of the dry climate[17]. There are reports of leptospirosis affecting pigs, cattle and wild animals in South Africa[8,10,15,16,19,21]. A recent study conducted on cattle from rural communities in KwaZulu-Natal identified Pomona as the most common serovar serovars Tarassovi, Bratislava, Hardjo, Canicola and Icterohaemorrhagiae were identified[9]
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