Blastocystis sp. from food animals in India

Abstract

Blastocystis, a zoonotic protozoan found in the intestinal tracts of a wide range of animals, has not been reported from non-human hosts from India so far. Organisms indistinguishable from Blastocystis sp. were identified in the Giemsa stained intestinal scrapings collected from carcasses of piglet and poultry that were brought for necropsy to the Central University Laboratory, Chennai.The 'central vacuole forms' of the parasite, with number of nuclei ranging from 1 to 12 were identified. The intensity of infection was low, with less than one organism per oil immersion field, indicating that their presence was unconnected to the cause of death. Caecal scraping was found to be more ideal than duodenal scraping for the diagnosis of Blastocystis, and can be a potential specimen for definitive diagnosis. Identical organisms were also detected in the dung samples of a buffalo calf which showed clinical signs of diarrhoea The presence of Blastocystis in food animals acquires public health significance, as many subtypes of the parasite from poultry and pigs are transmissible to humans.

Changes in the Microbial Composition of the Cecum and Histomorphometric Analysis of Its Epithelium in Broilers Fed with Feed Mixture Containing Fermented Rapeseed Meal

“…It slightly increased and significantly decreased after supplementation with B. subtilis strains 87Y and 67, respectively. Blastocystis is an opportunistic pathogen and has previously been shown to cause a wide range of gastrointestinal tract symptoms [ 51 ]. Importantly, the addition of fermented or unfermented rapeseed meal showed inhibition of protozoan B. hominis development.…”

Molecular subtyping and phylogeny of Blastocystis sp. isolated from turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) populations in Penang, Malaysia

“…Conferring to the study of Zaki et al (1991), enduring smears seem to be the technique of choice for light microscopic analysis. The staining characteristic of Blastocystis with Giemsa is alike to that defined by Yamada & Yoshikawa (2012) and Sreekumar et al (2014) with the occurrence of an amorphous and granular substantial in the central vacuole and fluctuating number of nuclei (1-12) in the external rim of the cytoplasm. Morphological characteristics of Blastocystis in turkey isolates were observed.…”

“…in turkey population was moderate with the prevalence of 43.8% (70/160) concurrent with Blastocystis infection in turkey from Egypt with 50% (6/12) prevalence (Mokhtar & Youssef, 2018). However, Sreekumar et al (2014) reported high prevalence of infection in turkey from India with 70% (3/4).…”

“…Most of the previous studies on Blastocystis in poultry were concentrated on Blastocystis in domestic chickens (Stensvold et al, 2009;Alfellani et al, 2013;Ramirez et al, 2014;Greige et al, 2018;Mokhtar & Youssef, 2018;Wang et al, 2018;Deng et al, 2019;Rauff-Adedotun et al, 2020;, quails , ducks (Maloney et al, 2020;Rauff-Adedotun et al, 2020;Fahim et al, 2021; and ostriches (Chandrasekaran et al, 2014;Maloney et al, 2020;Rauff-Adedotun et al, 2020;Deng et al, 2021;Rudzinska et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2021). As there are very limited study in turkey population worldwide (Lee, 1970;Belova, 1992a;Noel et al, 2003;Sreekumar et al, 2014;Mokhtar & Youssef, 2018;Maloney et al, 2020) and none was conducted in Malaysia, therefore, this study will help to provide a baseline study on this neglected zoonotic protozoan parasite infection in turkey population mainly in the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia.…”

Molecular characterization of Blastocystis spp. in Hotan Black chickens in southern Xinjiang

“…To date, the overall infection rate of Blastocystis in chickens is 30.4% (1193/3, 927) globally and 20.1% (372/1, 854) in China according to previous studies and this study (Table 4). Of note, in most published studies with higher Blastocystis infection rates, chicken samples were collected from intensive poultry farms with high breeding densities, and lower Blastocystis infection rates were found in chickens kept in zoos (Deng et al., 2021; Lee & Stenzel, 1999; Sreekumar et al., 2014). However, the Hotan Black chickens sampled in this study underwent gross free‐range rearing.…”