Low prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in pork from slaughter houses in the central of China

Abstract

Background: Toxoplasma gondii is widely distributed and can infect many species of warm-blooded animals , including swine. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of T. gondii infection in pork from the cent er of China. A total of 2 798 samples, including 305 hearts, 2086 diaphragm s , and 4 0 7 sera were collected from Henan Province, China . The modified agglutination test was used to detect antibodies against T. gondii in ser a from jugular vein blood and heart blood (cut-off: 1:25) , diaphragm exudate (cut-off: 1:10) . T. gondii DNA was screened from the digestive juice of all diaphragm tissue samples , and attempt to isolate viable T. gondii strain by bioassay in mice.Results: A total of 9.94% (278/2798) swine showed sera conversion of T. gondii antibodies. Region , but not gender , was associated with T. gondi infection in swine. T. gondii nucleic acid w as not found in the meat digestive juice s ( 2090 swine ) . Three groups of mice showed T. gondii antibodies after having been bioassayed with diaphragm samples (3/81). Unfortunately, no viable T. gondii strain was isolated from pork.Conclusions : This is the first large-scale survey T. gondi infection in pork from central China. Overall, the prevalence of viable T. gondii in pork was extremely low. Nevertheless, T. gondi i infection is present in swine from center China. Consumers could acquire T. gondii infection from ingestion of raw or undercooked pork.