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ANIMAL RESERVOIRS, VECTORS, AND TRANSMISSION OF MICROSPORIDIA
Citation:
Fayer, R., M. Santin, I. M. Sulaiman, J. Trout, L. Xunde, F W. Schaefer, L. Xiao, AND A. A. Lal. ANIMAL RESERVOIRS, VECTORS, AND TRANSMISSION OF MICROSPORIDIA. Presented at American Soecity of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 51st Annnual Meeting, Denver, CO, November 10-14, 2002.
Impact/Purpose:
1) Refine new, practical methods for the detection of CCL-related and emerging waterborne human protozoa.
2) Perform field tests of devices or methods that have been developed under this task.
3) Evaluate these methods or devices in a variety of water matrices and parasite concentrations.
This work in this task supports CCL2 and 3 and is expected to be completed by 9/07.
Description:
Fourteen species of microsporidia have been identified as opportunistic or emerging pathogens of humans. Several genotypes of Enterocytozoon bieneusi, the most frequently diagnosed species in humans, have been identified in Europe in farm and companion animals including pigs, cattle, cats, dogs, a llama, and chickens. Of 88 animals examined from herds in Germany, E. bieneusi has been identified in 8 calves. Molecular techniques were developed to determine the prevalence of E. bieneusi in calves on farms in North America. Of 300 preweaned calves from 5 states, 46 calves were PCR positive for microsporidia and 5 of these were positive for E. bieneusi. Wildlife that inhabit wetlands adjacent to farming areas were also examined. Feces from over 400 beavers, foxes, muskrat, otters, and raccoons, trapped in eastern Maryland, were examined for microsporidia using a 2-step nested PCR protocol for E. bieneusi. Fifty-nine samples were sequenced and multiple alignments of these sequences identified 15 genotypes of E. bieneusi of which 13 have not been reported before. Most genotypes were found in multiple species of wildlife. Some isolates from muskrats and raccoons formed two distinct groups, while the rest belong to a major group with all the previously described E. bieneusi genotypes from human and non-human sources. These findings indicate that livestock and wildlife can be potential sources of human-pathogenic E. bieneusi.