Epidemiology and public health significance of Cryptosporidium isolated from cattle, buffaloes, and humans in Egypt

Abstract

The epidemiology and public health significance of Cryptosporidium species and genotypes were investigated in Beni-Suef Governorate, Egypt. A total of 610 animal fecal samples (480 from cattle and 130 from buffaloes) beside 290 stool samples from humans were collected in the period between January and December 2014. Based on the microscopic examination, the overall estimated prevalence of Cryptosporidium spp. in cattle, buffaloes, and humans was 10.2, 12.3, and 19 %, respectively. The highest detection rates were in calves less than 2 months of age (17.1 %) and diarrheic animals (13.0 %). Likewise in humans, the highest prevalence of Cryptosporidium was in infants (31.3 %) and diarrheic individuals (21.1 %). The gender distribution in humans denoted that Cryptosporidium was reported more frequently in males (21.7 %) than females (14.5 %). Based on the molecular characterization of Cryptosporidium, Cryptosporidium oocyst wall protein (COWP) and gp60 genes were successfully amplified in 36 out of 50 samples subjected to genotyping. Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of the COWP fragments revealed that Cryptosporidium parvum was the only species detected in cattle (12 isolates) and buffaloes (4 isolates), while in humans, the detected species were Cryptosporidium hominis (15 isolates) and C. parvum (5 isolates). Sequence analysis of the gp60 gene identified the subtype IIdA20G1 within C. parvum isolated from both animals and humans. The common occurrence of zoonotic subtypes of C. parvum in cattle and buffaloes highlights the potential role of these animals as significant reservoirs of infection to humans. Also, the presence of C. hominis and C. parvum in humans indicates that both anthroponotic and zoonotic pathways are expected.

Multilocus typing of Cryptosporidium spp. in young calves with diarrhea in Korea

“…No statistically significant differences were observed for sex and type of cattle in the case of C. parvum and C. bovis/ryanae (P > 0.05). A previous study showed a higher prevalence of Cryptosporidium in males than in females (Ibrahim et al, 2016); however, in the present study, although a slightly but insignificantly higher prevalence in males was noted.…”

“…Cryptosporidium spp. are distributed worldwide, and different species are responsible for diarrhea in pre-weaned or post-weaned calves (Santín and Zarlenga, 2009;Zhang et al, 2015;Ibrahim et al, 2016). Previous studies using different methods found variable prevalence rates of Cryptosporidium in cattle: 49.4% (39/79) in Hungary using IFA (Plutzer and Karanis, 2007), 11.9% (68/571) in the United States using PCR (Fayer et al, 2006), 75.0% (60/80) in Japan using PCR (Karanis et al, 2010), 20.0% (15/60) in New Zealand using IFA (Shrestha et al, 2014), 5.1% (150/2945) in China using PCR (Zhang et al, 2015), 21.5-22.5% in Ireland using direct fluorescence antibody testing (Mirhashemi et al, 2016), and 10.2% (49/480) in Egypt using microscopy with staining (Ibrahim et al, 2016).…”

First molecular investigation ofCryptosporidiumspp. in young calves in Algeria

“…In Egypt, calves are predominantly infected with C. parvum subtypes of the IId and IIa families [2], which are also found in humans in this country [15]. In Tunisia, C. parvum IIaA15G2R1 and IIdA16G1 subtypes were identified in calves and children from a rural area in the north of the country [19].…”

Cryptosporidium and Giardia in Africa: current and future challenges

“…The most commonly used genotyping tools for Cryptosporidium in Africa are PCR and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and/or sequence analysis of the 18S rRNA gene [23, 25, 28, 72, 82–103] (Table 1), although some studies have relied on the Cryptosporidium oocyst wall protein (COWP) gene [26, 82, 92, 100, 104–108], which is not as reliable as the 18S locus at identifying and differentiating Cryptosporidium species [109]. Subtyping of Cryptosporidium has been conducted mainly at the glycoprotein 60 ( gp60 ) gene locus [23, 26, 82, 93–95, 98, 100, 102, 108, 110–115] (Table 2) while others targeted the heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) gene [91, 92, 100, 116–118]. Genotyping of Giardia in Africa, has mainly been conducted using the triose-phosphate isomerase ( tpi ) gene, beta-giardin ( bg ) and glutamate dehydrogenase ( gdh) genes, either alone or using a combination of two or three loci [80, 99, 103, 119–124] (see Tables 1, 3 and 4).…”

“…The C. parvum subtype family IIm, which was discovered in Nigeria [141], also appears to be anthroponotically transmitted, as it has not been identified in animals. High occurrences of zoonotic C. parvum subtype families (IIa and IId) have however been detected in some studies in Egypt, Ethiopia and Tunisia [23, 82, 95, 108, 140]. Few subtyping studies have been conducted on C. meleagridis isolates with C. meleagridis subtype IIIdA4 identified in humans in South Africa [89].…”