Identification and Characterization of Trypanosoma Subspecies in South Sinai, Egypt

Abstract

Trypanosomosis is a general term for infections caused by various trypanosome species in different hosts. The present study aimed to identify trypanosome subspecies infecting ruminant livestock in South Sinai Governorate, Egypt. An overall of 446 animals was examined by stained blood smears and by three sets of primers targeting 450, 205 & 436 bp of the DNA of Trypanozoon, T. evansi type A, and T. evansi type B. Of those examined animals, trypanosomes were present in 5(1.12%) under the microscope; (5.71%) in camels and (2.65%) in cattle and absent in sheep and goats. The internal transcribed spacer regions (ITS) specific primers identified only Trypanozoon infections, whereas other trypanosomes belonging to T. theileri, T. vivax, T. congolense did not amplify. There is an agreement in positivity between ITS1-rPCR and RoTat1.2 species-specific primers of T. evansi type A in 65/446(14.57%) in the same samples. Among the total, 22(32.35%) goats, 36(31.86%) cattle, and 7(20.0%) camels have T. evansi type A in a chronic phase infection, whereas sheep have no trypanosomes. The present sequenced isolates expressed in GenBank with accession numbers; MZ198117, MZ198118, MZ198119, MZ198120, and MZ198121. They are identical 100% with T. evansi Type A, whereas Type B and Type C were absent. It was related to the other Egyptian and Philippines isolates, whereas it was distant from the reference Chinese, Mongolian, Indian, and some Iranian isolates in GenBank. We concluded that the present results were helpful to know genetic homogeneity among different strains in the eastern borders of Egypt.