Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Toxoplasma gondii in small mammals in Romania - what you need to know
By Kalmár, Zsuzsa et al.·Published in BMC veterinary research·2023·University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Toxoplasma gondii in small mammals in Romania: the influence of host, season and sampling location.
- Species:
- cat
Plain-English summary
Researchers in Romania studied a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which can infect many warm-blooded animals, including pets and humans. They looked at 471 small mammals, like rodents and shrews, over two years in different environments to see how factors like location and season affected infection rates. They found that about 7.3% of these animals carried the parasite, with certain species, like the bank vole and the European ground squirrel, showing higher infection rates. Interestingly, the presence of domestic cats in urban areas didn't seem to influence the infection rates, and the infection was more common in older animals, especially in the autumn. Overall, the study concluded that the parasite's presence is patchy and mainly linked to specific host species rather than the environment they live in.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite that infects a large spectrum of warm-blooded animals, including humans. Small rodents and insectivores play an important role in the epidemiology of T. gondii and may serve as a source of infection for both, domestic and wild definitive felid hosts. Factors influencing the occurrence of T. gondii in wild small mammals are unknown, despite the fact that many intermediate host species are identified. We have used small mammals (Rodentia and Lipotyphla) captured over two years in various habitats, both in urbanised and in natural landscapes. We assessed the importance of land-use, season and host ecology on T. gondii infection. RESULTS: We examined 471 individuals belonging to 20 small mammal species, collected at 63 locations spread over wide altitude, habitat and land-use ranges from Romania. Heart tissue samples were individually analysed by PCR targeting the 529 bp repetitive DNA fragment of T. gondii. The overall prevalence of infection was 7.3%, with nine species of rodents and two species of shrews being found to carry T. gondii DNA. Five species showed high frequency of infection, with the highest prevalence found in Myodes glareolus (35.5%), followed by Spermophilus citellus (33.3%), Sorex minutus (23.1%), S. araneus (21.7%) and Micromys minutus (11.1%). Adults seemed more often infected than young, however when controlling for season, the difference was not significant, as in spring both adults and young showed higher infection rates, but more adults were sampled. Contrary to our expectations, urban/rural areas (with their implicit high density of domestic feline presence) had no effect on infection prevalence. In addition, neither habitat, nor land-use at sampling sites was important as only geographical location and host species were contributing factors to the infection risk. CONCLUSIONS: High prevalence of T. gondii infection showed a highly localised, patchy occurrence, with long living and higher mobility host species being the most common carriers, especially during autumn.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37773155/