Abstract
Trypanosoma cruzi is a parasitic protozoan that infects a diversity of hosts constituting the cycle of enzootic transmission in wild environments and causing disease in humans (Chagas disease) and domestic animals. Wild mammals constitute natural reservoirs of this parasite, which is transmitted by hematophagous kissing bugs of the family Reduviidae. T. cruzi is genetically subdivided into six discrete typing units (DTUs), T. cruzi (Tc)I to TcVI. In Brazil, especially in the state of Paraná, TcI and TcII are widely distributed. However, TcII is less frequently found in wild reservoirs and triatomine, and more frequently found in patients. The goal of this study was to investigate the natural occurrence of T. cruzi in wild synanthropic mammals captured in urban forest fragments of the Atlantic Forest of Paraná, southern Brazil. In this way, 12 opossums and 35 bats belonging to five species were captured in urban forest parks of the city of Maringá, Paraná, an area considered endemic for Chagas disease. PCR-kinetoplast DNA molecular diagnostic reveals Trypanosoma sp. infection in 12 (100%) Didelphis albiventris and 10 (40%) Artibeus lituratus. In addition to demonstrating the presence of Trypanosoma in the two groups of mammals studied, we obtained an isolate of the parasite genotyped as TcII by amplification of the cytochrome oxidase II gene by PCR, followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism with AluI, and confirmed by PCR of rDNA 24Sα. This is the first record of the encounter in wild mammals of Trypanosoma DNA (in A. lituratus) and T. cruzi DTU TcII (in D. albiventris) in the state of Paraná.
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