Prevalence of antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii in horses in the province of Kars, Turkey

Abstract

This study investigates the seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in horses from seven villages in the province of Kars in north-eastern Turkey. A total of 189 serum samples from clinically healthy, local crossbred horses were tested for anti-T. gondii antibodies using the Sabin-Feldman dye test. Antibodies to T. gondii were found in 39 (20.6%) horses, with specific titres of 1 : 16 (27), 1 : 64 (11) and 1 : 256 (1). The 95% confidence interval for the population proportion ranged from 13.3 to 27.9%. The number of seropositive horses in Yucelen village (40%) was considerably higher than in other villages, whereas in the villages of Caglayan (8%) and Cerme (10.5%) the seroprevalence was lower than elsewhere. However, the differences in seroprevalence between the seven villages were not statistically significant (P > 0.05). In contrast, the overall seroprevalence in the province of Kars was significantly higher than that reported previously in studies carried out on army and private horse stud farms elsewhere in Turkey (P < 0.05). The relevance of these findings to the epizootiology of toxoplasmosis in Kars and Turkey is discussed.

Epidemiological Aspects in the Leptospira spp. and Toxoplasma gondii Infection in Horses from Botucatu, São Paulo, Brazil

“…Moreover, the results are markedly lower than those found by Akca et al [30] (39/189; 20.6%) in different provinces of Turkey. Ghazy et al [31] found even higher results among 420 serum samples tested in Egypt, with 40.5% of positivity by IFAT.…”

Neospora spp. and Toxoplasma gondii antibodies in horses in the Czech Republic

“…In Europe, T. gondii prevalence in horses ranges from 1% to 21%, with the differences due to the different methods used with the different cut-off and the different number of horses examined. Antibodies to T. gondii were detected in 2-21% of horses in Turkey tested by Sabin-Feldman reaction (SFR) (Babür et al 1998;Akca et al 2004), in 1% of horses in Sweden tested by ELISA and by a direct agglutination test (Uggla et al 1990;Jakubek et al 2006), in 8-10% of horses in the Czech Republic tested by SFR and 4% of horses tested by a complement-fixation reaction (Zástěra et al 1966;Hejlíček and Literák 1994).…”

Situação epidemiológica da infecção por Toxoplasma gondii em equídeos na microrregião do Brejo Paraibano

“…Nos Estados Unidos foi relatada uma soroprevalência de 6,9% (Dubey et al 1999a) e 0,4% (Dubey et al 2003); mas dados de países latino americanos mostram que anticorpos para T. gondii são frequentes (Argentina, 13,1% e Costa Rica, 34,0%) (Dubey et al 1999b, Dangoudoubiyam et al 2011). Na Turquia, Akca et al (2004) e Karatepe et al (2010) relataram uma soropositividade em equinos de 20,6% na província de Kars, e na província de Nigde soropositividade de 7,2%, respectivamente. Anticorpos contra T. gondii também foram detectados em equinos na República Tcheca (Bárto-vá et al 2010).…”

“…Beech & Dodd (1974) relataram uma doença neurológica em equinos associada a organismos semelhantes ao Toxoplasma. No entanto, a infecção por T. gondii em equinos geralmente é inaparente, sendo caracterizada pela manutenção de títu-los de anticorpos e presença de cistos teciduais (Langoni et al 2007), progredindo subclinicamente e, portanto, o diagnóstico baseia-se principalmente no emprego de métodos sorológicos para detectar os anticorpos (Akca et al 2004, Alanazi & Alyousif 2011.…”