Serological Evidence ofspp. in Western Australian Dogs.

Abstract

It has been claimed that dogs can be useful sentinels for public health monitoring of vector-borne infectious diseases, includingspp. We used 153 canine blood samples opportunistically collected at Murdoch University Veterinary Hospital and 156 canine sera collected from Aboriginal communities in northwest Western Australia to test for evidence ofspp. exposure, using microimmunofluorescence (MIF) in the latter case, and both MIF and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in the former. Conventional and real-time PCR failed to amplify anyspp. DNA. The seroprevalence for spotted fever group/transitional groupspp. in Western Australian dogs was 17.3% (54/312), and for typhus group (TG)spp., 18.4% (57/310), with a cut-off titer of 1:128. Young dogs (≤ 2 years) from Aboriginal communities had significantly lower seropositivity to TGspp. compared with all other groups, and young Perth dogs had a significantly higher seropositivity to TGspp. than all Aboriginal community dogs.