Isolation and Identification of Chlamydia abortus from Aborted Ewes in Sulaimani Province, Northern Iraq

Abstract

Abortion in small ruminants is a significant problem in Iraq and causes severe economic losses in sheep farms. Chlamydia abortus causes enzootic abortion in ewes and is associated with reproductive problems in sheep in Sulaimani province – Northern Iraq. During a lambing season in 2017, abortion was widespread among several sheep flocks in different regions of Sulaimani (Kalar, Said Sadiq, and Chamchamal), and C. abortus was one of the causes. Accordingly, we carried out this study to isolate and identify C. abortus in aborted ewes in these regions. We collected 30 samples of aborted fetuses from five herds in which abortions had been observed. The pathogen isolation was done by inoculation into embryonated chicken eggs and conventional PCR was used to identify C. abortus in clinical specimens. C. abortus was identified in one of the 30 aborted fetuses (3.33%) from the Kalar district, and all the remaining 29 samples (96.66%) were found positive to Brucella abortus. The gene ompA encoding the outer membrane protein of C. abortus was sequenced and got the accession number MK643153 in NCBI GenBank. The sequence was named C. abortus strain Sul/2017. Our isolate showed 99.79% homology with Sul/014 (accession No. KY399850) and differed from the latter by two amino acid substitutions at E115K and K259N. The topology of the phylogenetic tree based on the ompA gene showed that the isolate belongs to C. abortus and has a common ancestor with isolates of sheep in Iraq and Tunisia with accession numbers KY399850 and HQ62243, respectively.

Abortive diseases and their various associated risk factors in small ruminants in Algeria: a systematic review

“…Chlamydia abortus , causing enzootic abortion in sheep, is considered one of the major causes of abortion in small ruminants worldwide (Tejedor-Junco et al 2019 ). Abortion is observed in particular during the last 2 or 3 weeks of gestation (Arif et al 2020 ). The prevalence reported herein ranges from 08.5 to 35.41% with an average of 32.72%, which is in agreement with the previous prevalence of 27.2% in Morocco (Benkirane et al 2015 ), 14.9% in Egypt (Selim et al 2018a ), 21.8% in Jordan (Al-Qudah et al 2014 ), and 21.5% in Brazil (Pinheiro Junior et al 2010 ).…”

Phylogenetic and molecular analysis based on genes 16S-rRNA, OMPA and POMP to identify Chlamydia abortus infection occurrence at the milk samples of goats and sheep in west Azerbaijan of Iran

“…Nested polymerase chain reaction (Nested-PCR) was used to examine the presence of C. abortus genomic DNA in samples. The sequence of primers used to amplify the POMP 90-91B gene, which encodes the outer membrane protein of C. abortus , was selected based on a study by Szymanska-Czerwinska et al and Arif et al ( 16 , 17 ). For the molecular detection of C. abortus PCR targeting the ompA was employed.…”

Current state of knowledge regarding bacterially-induced abortion in sheep

“…This paper aims to review the recent literature on abortions in sheep caused by bacterial agents such as Brucella spp. [13], Coxiella burnetti [14], Campylobacter spp. [15], Helicobacter spp.…”