BackgroundToxoplasma gondii is the causative agent for a major zoonosis with cosmopolitan distribution. Water has been implicated in outbreaks of toxoplasmosis in recent years. Coypus (Myocastor coypus), commonly nutria, are large semi-aquatic invasive rodents, naturalized throughout European countries, including most wetlands of Central Italy. The habitat of these animals is both terrestrial and aquatic, making them a species highly exposed to the parasite.FindingsThe occurrence of the infection was evaluated using a modified agglutination test (MAT) in 74 adult coypus from a naturalized population living in a wetland of Central Italy. Nested PCR (n-PCR) assay was carried out on some of them. Positive T. gondii MAT results were found in 44 animals (59·4%), 30 males (68·2%) and 14 females (31·8%). Antibody titers were ranging from 20 to 40960, while 12 out of 23 (52·2%), examined animals, 8 males (66·7%) and 4 females (33·3%), resulted positive to n-PCR. All n-PCR positive animals were seropositive, showing antibody titers ranging from 640 to 40960.ConclusionsOur results indicate that examined animals are heavily parasitized with Toxoplasma. This suggests that coypus could be a reservoir of this parasite, because they can be eaten both by scavenger animals and by humans, and that these animals would play a role in maintaining the cycle of T. gondii.
Twenty-nine Leishmania infantum strains characterized by different host source, tropism and belonging to 6 zymodemes, were examined by restriction enzyme analysis of kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) using 15 endonucleases. The enzymes which produced only one fragment revealed full identity between all the strains examined, while those producing many bands gave different electrophoretic patterns. They were interpreted with the aid of numerical analyses (cluster and multifactorial analysis). The results show a cline of genetic variability among the strains, the highest similarity being observed between most of the viscerotropic strains isolated from man, dog, black rat and sandflies. The strain agents of human cutaneous leishmaniasis show a varying degree of genetic divergence from this group, which appears more evident when characters from isoenzymes are considered.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.