Graphical Abstract (for review) Click here to download high resolution image Bullet points A systematic review of literature conducted after Pubmed search for Neospora and cattle  Modelling after review suggests that the cost of N caninum globally exceeds one billion dollars  Approximately two thirds of the costs of N caninum are incurred by dairy industries world-wide  Analysis of the regional distribution of global costs of N caninum highlights the cattle industries of the North American as incurring two thirds of the overall global cost  At the farm level, costs only exceed US$ 2,000 in four countries Neospora caninum is regarded as one of the most important infectious causes of abortions in 20 cattle world-wide, yet the global economic impact of the infection has not been established. 21A systematic review of the economic impact of N caninum infections/abortions was 22 conducted, searching PubMed with the terms cattle and Neospora. This yielded 769 23 publications whose abstracts were screened for economically relevant information (e.g. 24 abortion prevalence and risk, serological prevalence). Further analysis was restricted to 25 countries with at least 5 relevant publications. In total, 99 studies (12.9%) from ten countries 26 contained data from the beef industry (25 papers (25.3%)) and 72 papers (72.8%) from the 27 dairy industry (with the remainder two papers (2.0%) describing general abortion statistics). 28The total annual cost of N caninum infections/abortions was estimated to range from a 29 median US $1.1 million in the New Zealand beef industry to an estimated median total of 30 US$ 546.3 million impact per annum in the US dairy population. The estimate for the total 31 median N caninum-related losses exceeded US$ 1.298 billion per annum, ranging as high as 32 US$ 2.380 billion. Nearly two thirds of the losses were incurred by the dairy industry (US$ 33 842.9 million). Annual losses on individual dairy farms were estimated to reach a median of 34 US$ 1,600.00, while on beef farms these costs amounted to just US$ 150.00. Pregnant cows 35 and heifers were estimated to incur, on average, a loss due to N caninum of less than 36 US$20.00 for dairy, and less than US$ 5.00 for beef. These loss estimates, however rose to 37 ~US$ 110.00 and US$ 40.00, respectively for N caninum-infected pregnant dairy and beef 38 cows. This estimate of global losses due to N caninum, with the identification of clear target 39 markets (countries, as well as cattle industries), should provide incentive to develop 40 treatment options and/or vaccines. 41 42 Keywords: Neospora caninum, abortion, cattle, costs, economics, dairy, beef 43 3 Introduction 44Neospora caninum is recognised world-wide as an important infectious cause of 45 abortion in primarily cattle, and of clinical disease in dogs (Dubey and Schares, 2011). 46 Infection with N caninum is frequent in canid populations (Barber et al., 1997; Reichel, 47 1998); also recently reviewed by Al-Qassab et al. (2010)) yet clinical cases in dogs are rarely 48report...

McAllister, Milton M.; Pitt, William C.; and Zemlicka, Doris E., "Coyotes (Canis latrans) are definitive hosts of

Scarce information is available about Neospora caninum oocysts and sporozoites, in part because only small numbers of oocysts have typically been produced by experimentally infected dogs. We hypothesized that I reason for low experimental production of oocysts is that dogs have been fed tissues from experimentally infected mice instead of tissues from cattle (which are natural intermediate hosts of N. caninum). In this study, 9 dogs were fed tissues from N. caninum-infected calves, and oocyst production was compared with 6 dogs that were fed infected mouse carcasses. The number of oocysts produced by dogs that ingested infected calf tissues (mean = 160,700) was significantly greater (P = 0.03) than the number of oocysts shed by dogs that ingested infected mice (mean = 5,400). The second goal of our experiment was to demonstrate cyclical oral transmission of N. caninum between dogs and cattle. As few as 300 oocysts were used to successfully infect calves, and tissues from these calves induced patent infections in 2 of 3 dogs; oocysts from I of these dogs were administered to another calf, and tissues from this calf subsequently induced a third dog to shed oocysts. Oocysts were confirmed to be N. caninum using a species-specific polymerase chain reaction technique. In addition, sporulated oocysts were used to recover N. caninum in vitro after digestion in an acid-pepsin solution and inoculation of cell monolayers.

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