First report of Babesia gibsoni in Central America and survey for vector-borne infections in dogs from Nicaragua

Lanjing Wei,Chengming Wang,Bernhard Kaltenboeck,Kate Ackerson,Jilei Zhang,Heba S El-Mahallawy,Patrick Kelly

doi:10.1186/1756-3305-7-126

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough many vector-borne diseases are important causes of morbidity and mortality in dogs in tropical areas and potential zoonoses, there is little information on these conditions in Central America.MethodsSeven qPCRs for vector-borne pathogens were performed on a Roche LightCycler PCR Instrument to investigate their prevalence in a convenience sample of whole blood samples from apparently healthy dogs in Nicaragua. Also, a qPCR targeting the canine hydroxymethylbilane synthase (HMBS) gene was used as an endogenous internal control and verified the quality and quantity of DNA in the samples was appropriate for the study.ResultsWe found DNA of Rickettsia felis (5%), Babesia spp. (26%), Hepatozoon canis (51%), Anaplasma platys (13%) and Ehrlichia canis (56%) in the 39 dogs studied. The qPCRs for Coxiella burnetii and Dirofilaria immitis were negative. Of the 30 (80%) dogs that were positive by qPCR, 12 (31%) were positive for one agent, 11 (28%) for two, 3 (8%) for three, and 4 (10%) for four agents.ConclusionsThis is the first report of B. gibsoni in dogs from Central America and the first recording of vector-borne agents in dogs from Nicaragua. Dogs in Nicaragua are commonly infected with a variety of vector-borne pathogens, some of which may also infect people.

Highlights

Many vector-borne diseases are important causes of morbidity and mortality in dogs in tropical areas and potential zoonoses, there is little information on these conditions in Central America
The qPCR for the hydroxymethylbilane synthase (HMBS) gene was positive on all samples with 2.1 × 106 ± 8.8 × 105 copies/ml whole blood, indicating successful extraction of amplifiable DNA from all samples
The qPCR we developed for D. immitis consistently gave positive results with the quantitative standard we synthesized

Summary

Introduction

Many vector-borne diseases are important causes of morbidity and mortality in dogs in tropical areas and potential zoonoses, there is little information on these conditions in Central America. Vector-borne agents are important causes of morbidity and mortality in dogs worldwide [1,2,3,4]. Knowledge of the prevalences of canine vector-borne disease is important for veterinarians and their patients as well as for workers in the public health field [5]. There is only very limited data on vector-borne diseases in dogs from the seven Central American states with reports from only three countries, mainly Costa Rica [6,7,8], Panama [9,10,11] and Guatemala [12].

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Results

Conclusion