Serological survey of <i>Encephalitozoon cuniculi</i> infection in cats in Japan

Abstract

Antibodies to Encephalitozoon cuniculi (E. cuniculi) were examined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay using E. cuniculi PTP2 recombinant protein from serum samples that had been collected from a total of 295 cats in Japan. Of these samples, 6.1% (18/295) had antibodies against E. cuniculi, which included 6.3% (6/96) of the male cats and 6.0% (12/199) of the female cats. The incidence was slightly higher in feral cats (8.3%, 11/132) compared to domesticated cats (4.3%, 7/163). This suggests the possibility that the cats of our country have become a reservoir of E. cuniculi. This study is the first to demonstrate the prevalence of E. cuniculi infection in cats in Japan.

Prevalence of feline coronavirus, feline leukemia virus, and feline immunodeficiency virus in client-owned cats in Croatia

“…1). In contrast, the seroprevalence of FCoV in the current study was higher than observed in Sweden [6], Israel [5], Japan [31], and Australia [25], but lower than in Switzerland [28], Turkey [1,2], China [32], and Brazil [3] (Table 1).…”

“…1) was similar to the results of studies from Italy [52,41], Austria [44], Poland [30], Cyprus [46], Israel [5], Brazil [51], and Mexico [42] (Table 2). In the current study, the FeLV prevalence was higher than observed in Ireland [17], Germany [18], Serbia [19], Switzerland [48], USA and Canada [16], Japan [31], Thailand [49], Australia [12], and New Zealand [47], but lower than in Hungary [8], Turkey [1,29], Malaysia [50,9], Iran [43], and China [45] (Table 2).…”

Encephalitozoon cuniculi infection in cats: European guidelines from the ABCD on prevention and management

“…Modified trichrome stain (MTS) and Gram stain, detected by light microscopy, and calcofluor white stain, detected by ultraviolet light microscopy, are the best stains for detecting spores of E cuniculi in paraffin-embedded tissues. These stains were Stray 17 and feral 23 cats are more likely to be exposed or infected than pet cats.…”

Zoonotic Risk of Encephalitozoon cuniculi in Animal-Assisted Interventions: Laboratory Strategies for the Diagnosis of Infections in Humans and Animals

“…Various serological investigations with different methodologies and sample sizes were carried out in different countries, with a serological status between 0% and 26.8% [41,[48][49][50][51].…”

“…Diagnosis of E. cuniculi infections in wild and pet animals is actually based on different strategies, including histopathology, serological testing, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), Western blot, indirect immune fluorescence antibody test (IFAT) and molecular testing, which includes different types of polymerase chain reactions (PCR) [10,50,51,54,[85][86][87]. However, E. cuniculi diagnosis has equally gained an increase in importance in human health, since the microsporidia can live in both immunocompetent and immunocompromised individuals and cause important illness in the latter [77,80,83,88,89].…”