Echinococcus spp. in central Kenya: a different story

Abstract

Research on cystic echinococcosis (CE) has a long history in Kenya, but has mainly concentrated on two discrete areas, Turkana and Maasailand, which are known to be foci of human CE in Africa. Here, we report on a survey for CE in livestock from central to northeastern Kenya, from where no previous data are available. A total of 7,831 livestock carcasses were surveyed. CE prevalence was 1.92% in cattle (n = 4,595), 6.94% in camels (n = 216), 0.37% in goats (n = 2,955) and 4.62% in sheep (n = 65). Identification of the parasite was done using an RFLP-PCR of the mitochondrial nad1 gene, which had been validated before against the various Echinococcus taxa currently recognized as distinct species. From a total of 284 recovered cysts, 258 could be identified as Echinococcus granulosus sensu stricto (n = 160), E. ortleppi (n = 51) and E. canadensis (n = 47) by RFLP-PCR of nad1. In cattle, fertile cysts occurred mostly in the lungs and belonged to E. ortleppi (31 of 54), while the vast majority were sterile or calcified cysts of E. granulosus s.s.. Most fertile cysts in camels belonged to E. canadensis (33 of 37); sterile or calcified cysts were rare. Goats harboured fertile cysts of E. ortleppi (n = 3)--which is the first record in that host species--and E. canadensis (n = 1), while all cysts of E. granulosus were sterile. Only sterile cysts were found in the three examined sheep. Typically, all cysts in animals with multiple infections belonged to the same species, while mixed infections were rare. Our data indicate that the epidemiological situation in central to northeastern Kenya is clearly different from the well-studied pastoral regions of Turkana and Maasailand, and the apparently low number of human CE cases correlates with the infrequent occurrence of E. granulosus s.s.

Global Distribution of Alveolar and Cystic Echinococcosis

“…CE prevalence in camels is extremely high in northwestern Kenya, much less so in northeastern Kenya, eastern Ethiopia and Somalia (Table S12), for reasons unknown. In Kenya, the majority of camel cysts belonged to G6/7, but fertile cysts of E. granulosus (G1e3) were also present at lower numbers Mbaya et al, 2014); the reverse situation was found in eastern Ethiopia . There are no prevalence data for pigs in eastern Africa, except for two older studies with negative results from Ethiopia (Table S11).…”

Taxonomy and molecular epidemiology of Echinococcus granulosus sensu lato

“…Elsewhere, it seems to be widespread, but usually rare (Cardona and Carmena, 2013). A small number of infections have been molecularly identified from cattle in Sudan (Dinkel et al, 2004;Omer et al, 2010), Kenya (Mbaya et al, 2014), South Africa (Mogoye et al, 2013), Brazil (de la Rue et al, 2006, Italy (Busi et al, 2007) and most recently in France (Grenouillet et al, 2014), cattle and buffaloes in India (Zhang et al, 1999), goats and sheep in Kenya (Mbaya et al, 2014), and pigs in Kenya and India (Dinkel et al, 2004;Pednekar et al, 2009). A case of monkey infection with E. ortleppi has been reported from Vietnam (Plesker et al, 2009), and a captive deer imported from France into the UK was found infected (Boufana et al, 2012).…”

Güreş Develerinde Nekropsi İle Tespit Edilen Helmintler

“…In countries with large numbers of camels, hydatidosis is also reported in these animals. According to these results, the prevalence of hydatidosis was found to be 7.45-70% in Iran [13] , 5.3% in Oman [14] , 2.53% in Egypt [15] , 6.86% in Saudi Arabia [16] , 8.8% in Jordan [17] , and 6.94% in Kenya [18] . In Central Asian camels, hydatic cysts have high viability and fertility rates [12] .…”