The Prevalence of Sarcocystis Affecting Slaughtered Cattle and Buffalo at Sirs-Elian Abattoir in Egypt

Abstract

Abstract The importance of sarcocystis emerged from the public health point of view, as it causing zoonotic infection so, this study aimed to throw the light on the prevalence of Sarcocystis in tow economically important animals (cattle and buffalo) in order to lowering the zoonotic potential of this parasite. The study was carried-out on a total of 7470 slaughtered animals of different ages and sex represented by 3879 cattle and 2630 buffalo which examined among the routine daily postmortem examination according to the legal requirements of Egyptian abattoirs. By using macroscopic examination and measuring the prevalence, Pepsin digestion and microscopic examination, and molecular identification using PCR and Sequencing of 18SrRNA gene. The overall infection of macroscopic sarcocystis was higher incidence in female 62.73 % than in male (0.73 %) as we failed to detect macroscopic cyst in cattle. While in buffalo the incidence was 63.39% and 3.64% in female and male respectively. The higher incidences of macroscopic sarcocystis observed in esophagus 46.82% (62.80% and 3.64 %) tongue 9.3% (12.56 % and 0.52 %)forequarter 3.9% (5.09 % and 0.73 %), for female and male respectively and macroscopic sarcocystis could not detected in the examined heart.Although the overall prevalence of microscopic cyst was 87% the higher incidence was in heart 63% (88% and 38%), esophagus 56% (72% and 40%), forequarter 55%(64% and 46%),tongue 41%(36% and 46%), diaphragm 32% (26% and 38%), hindquarter 27%(30% and 24%) in cattle and buffalo respectively.Furthermore, the molecular identification showed that isolates sarcocystis were S. cruzi, S. hominis in cattle and buffalo,and S. levinei and S. sinensis buffalo comparing with published data on GenBank. So, we concluded that that using conventional PCR are more sensitive method in detection of different sarcocystis spp than both naked eye inspection and pepsin digestion method. Also, there is more than one sarcocystis spps circulating in cattle and buffalo in Egypt and further studies needed to re-confirm the host range and identities of sarcocystis spps in both cattle and buffalo in Egypt.