THE PREVALENCE OF NATURAL MIXED INFECTION OF T. congolense and T. vivax IN CATTLE FROM SELECTED ABATTOIRS IN KADUNA METROPOLIS, KADUNA STATE, NIGERIA.

Abstract

Animal trypanosomiasis is a complex disease of animals found in Africa causing serious economic loss in animal production. This study was carried out to investigate the prevalence of natural mixed infection in cattle from selected abattoirs in Kaduna metropolis. Wet mount and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect the presence of trypanosomes in blood of cows which showed a prevalence of 17% for T. congolense and 4.3% for T. vivax while mixed infection of 1.3% was observed from two abattoirs. Tudun-wada abattoir was statistically significant at p<0.005. Further analysis conducted using PCR technique showed the presence of genomic DNA of trypanosomes from positive samples obtained from wet mount method as seen in plate 1. Primers TCS 344-345 for T. congolense at 437bp and TVW1-2 for T. vivax at 399bp confirmed the presence of both parasites as seen in plate 2. In conclusion, this study showed the presence of both parasites in natural mixed infection in cattle from Tudun Wada and Kawo abattoirs in 4 cows each. This also indicates that natural mixed infection can occur in the field invading the immune system of affected hosts. Therefore, we suggest that microscopy and PCR should be used side by side for effective detection of these parasites so as to proffer appropriate control measure in combating the menace of African animal trypanosomiasis.