Abstract
A descriptive study was conducted to identify the different strains of Echinococcus granulosus occurring in livestock in Moroto district, Uganda. Echinococcus cysts from 104 domestic animals, including cattle, sheep, goats and camels, were taken and examined by microscopy, polymerase chain reaction with restriction fragment length polymorphism and Sanger DNA sequencing. Echinococcus granulosus genotypes or strains were identified through use of Bioinformatics tools: BioEdit, BLAST and MEGA6. The major finding of this study was the existence of a limited number of E. granulosus genotypes from cattle, goats, sheep and camels. The most predominant genotype was G1 (96.05%), corresponding to the common sheep strain. To a limited extent (3.95%), the study revealed the existence of Echinococcus canadensis G6/7 in three (n = 3) of the E. granulosus–positive samples. No other strains of E. granulosus were identified. It was concluded that the common sheep strain of Echinococcus sensu stricto and G6/7 of E. canadensis were responsible for echinococcal disease in Moroto district, Uganda.
Highlights
Echinococcosis in humans is one of the neglected zoonotic diseases
104 that had suspected cysts were sampled (Table 1). These samples were subject to PCRRFLP for genotyping E. granulosus strains (Addy et al 2012) and 10% of positive samples for DNA sequencing
Of the suspected 104 samples, successful amplification of the E. granulosus NADH 1 gene occurred in 73.1% (n = 76) of the samples producing a band of approximately 850 bp, whilst 26.9% (n = 28) were not successfully amplified
Summary
Echinococcosis in humans is one of the neglected zoonotic diseases It is caused by metacestodes of the genus Echinococcus, with the main definitive host as the dog (Eckert et al 2001). This genus includes small tapeworms of carnivores with larval stages known as hydatid cysts or metacestodes that proliferate in various organs of the intermediate hosts, including humans. There are four forms of hydatidosis that have been deemed taxonomically valid (Soulsby 1982). These include cystic echinococcosis (CE) (E. granulosus), alveolar echinococcosis (E. multilocularis) and polycystic echinococcosis (E. vogeli and E. oligarthrus). Alveolar echinococcosis is more severe and fatal than CE but sporadic and more difficult to treat because of its characteristic multiple budding and infiltration into organs, including the brain (Eckert et al 2001)
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