BackgroundQ fever, caused by Coxiella burnetii, is a zoonosis with great public health significance and can cause financial losses to animal owners. The knowledge of the epidemiology of Q fever in Egypt is limited. Reports on this disease are scarce. In 2012 and 2013, we carried out this investigation to estimate the seroprevalence of antibodies to Coxiella burnetii in dairy cows of nine farms located in the lower Egyptian Governorates of Dakahlia, Damietta and Port Said. 1,194 blood sera were randomly collected from apparently healthy Holstein Friesian dairy cows. The collected sera were tested by ELISA for Coxiella burnetii antibodies.ResultsAll farms tested positive with seroprevalences ranging from 2.9 to 26.7% on farms with less than 200 animals and 9.8 to 20.0% in farms with more than 500 animals. 158 cows (13.2%) had anti-Coxiella antibodies.ConclusionQ fever may be enzootic in the cattle herds investigated in Damietta, Port Said, and Dakahlia Governorates of the Nile delta in both smaller and larger herds. There is a need for further research on the impact of Q fever on both veterinary and public health. The results of this study should trigger more detailed epidemiological studies in ruminants as well as investigations into the etiology of atypical pneumonia and fever of unknown origin in humans.
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The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of Coxiella burnetii infection in domestic ruminants and to detect Coxiella burnetii DNA from ticks and serum samples. A total of 24 ticks, 91 goats and 81 cattle serum samples with the history of abortion and reproductive disorders were collected from the different areas in Bangladesh. The serum samples were tested by CHEKIT Q-Fever Antibody ELISA Test Kit and Coxiella burnetii DNA was detected by multiplex quantitative realtime PCR. The overall prevalence was 7.6% and 6.1% in goats and cattle, respectively. However, none of seropositive samples and tick samples was positive in quantitative real-time PCR.Keywords: Q fever, Coxiella burnetii, Black Bengal goat, cattle, tick, Bangladesh INTRODUCTIONQ fever is a widespread zoonosis that is caused by Coxiella burnetii, an obligate, Gram-negative, intracellular bacterium (Baca and Pratesky, 1983;Behymer and Riemann, 1989;Kazar, 2005). This disease, described for the first time among abattoir workers in 1937 in Queensland, Australia, is now recognized as being endemic worldwide (Derrick, 1983;Maurin and Raoult, 1999). Both public and animal health issues are closely related to Q fever. The reservoir includes mammals, birds and arthropods mainly ticks (Ioannou et al., 2009). Domestic ruminants are often asymptomatic carriers of C. burnetii and are considered the most important reservoir and source for human Q fever (Woldehiwet, 2004). Coxiella burnetii is present in clinically inconspicuous sheep flocks ( Angela et al., 2012). However, other animal species like birds, reptiles, arthropods or pets can also be infected and possibly transmit the disease to humans (Angelakis and Raoult, 2009). In humans, Q fever can lead to an acute disease (self-limited febrile illness, pneumonia, or hepatitis) or to a chronic disease, mainly endocarditis in immunocompromised patients or patients suffering from valvulopathy and abortions and stillbirth in pregnant women (Angelakis and Raoult, 2009). Q fever or coxiellosis occurs during late pregnancy (about 15 days before term) and in animals provide abortions and stillbirths in goats and sheep, infertility, mastitis and endometritis in cattle (Heinzen et al., 1999;Woldehiwet, 2004;Berri et al., 2005) with associated economic impact for the herd.To control the spread of C. burnetii from animals to humans, the detection of shedders of C. burnetii and the knowledge of the prevalence of the infection are imperative. Only few reports on the prevalence of Q fever in animals are available in Bangladesh on the prevalence of Q fever in domestic ruminants were found from literature search in Bangladesh (Haider et al., 2015;Rahman et al., 2016). Haider et al. (2015) reported seroprevalence of Q fever in cattle and goats that were brought to veterinary hospitals in Netrokona, Dinajpur, and Chittagong districts in Bangladesh. Rahman et al. (2016) reported herd-level prevalence of Q fever in dairy cattle investigating bulk milk (Satkhira, Rajshahi, Chittagong), animal-level seropre...
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