Longitudinal detection of Cryptosporidium spp. in 1-10-week-old dairy calves on a farm in Xinjiang, China.

Abstract

Cryptosporidiosis is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in the cattle industry and leads to severe economic losses. Fecal samples were collected from 25 dairy calves once a week for 10 weeks for continuous longitudinal detection of Cryptosporidium spp. Cryptosporidium spp. were detected via nested PCR amplification of the ribosomal small subunit RNA gene, followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis with enzymes SspI and MboII to identify the species. PCR results indicated that all calves were infected with Cryptosporidium spp. at least once, with an average overall prevalence rate of 52.0% (130/250). One-week-old calves had the highest occurrences of Cryptosporidium infection (96.0%), 2-week-old calves (80.0%) had the second highest, and calves with watery diarrhea also had a higher occurrence of infection (92.3%). Four Cryptosporidium species, C. parvum, C. bovis, C. ryanae, and C. andersoni, were identified, with C. parvum being the most common. Forty-eight C. parvum isolates were further subtyped via nested PCR amplification of the 60-kDa glycoprotein gene, and all were identified as subtype IIdA15G1. The results demonstrated that C. parvum mainly infects dairy calves which are younger than 3 weeks old.