in Broiler Chicken Flocks: Clinical, Hematologic, Histopathologic, and Molecular Detection.

Abstract

Despite the vast Egyptian poultry production, scanty information is available concerning the infection of haemprotozoan parasites as pathogens in commercial broilers. In the present study, we provided the first detection of leucocytozoonosis in five broiler chicken flocks in El-Beheira Egyptian governorate. Despite the low mortality rates in the affected flocks (0.3%-1% as a 5-day mortality), severe postmortem (hemorrhagic spots and scars) and histopathologic lesions appeared in different organs including skeletal muscles, liver, kidney, pancreas, abdominal cavity, and bursa of Fabricius. Evaluation of blood smears revealed gametocytes in erythrocytes and leukocytes. Conventional reverse transcriptase-PCR and partial sequence analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidasegene detected. GenBank accession numbers of the five Egyptianisolates were obtained. The fivewere 99.9% identical to each other and 99.14% similar to themitochondrial DNA gene of Asian strains from India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.