Prevalence and Antibiogram study of <i>Rhodococcus equi</i> in equines of Jammu and Kashmir, India

Abstract

The present study was conducted to determine the prevalence of Rhodococcus equi infection in equines of Jammu and Kashmir, India, and evaluate the zoonotic threat posed by this organism to equine owners and tourists. One hundred and forty-one samples (98 samples from adult animals ≥5 years old and 43 samples from foals less than 6 months old) were collected in duplicate from nasopharyngeal tract of equines for isolation and direct PCR. A total of 12 isolates of R. equi were recovered, of which 9 were from foals and 3 from adult animals. Therefore, the present study recorded prevalence rates of 20.93% and 3.06% among foals and adult equines respectively. The prevalence rates were found to be 25.58% and 4.08% by 16S rRNA species-specific PCR among foals and adult animals respectively. Thus, the PCR-based assay was found to be more sensitive and helped in quick detection of R. equi than the culture based method which is time consuming and laborious. However, the culture-based method is still preferred due to some limitations of PCR. The antibiogram of the isolates revealed that erythromycin and rifampicin were the most effective antimicrobials with 100% sensitivity, followed by amoxicillin (66.67%), lincomycin (58.3%) and kanamycin (58.3%). The results also revealed that resistance was highest for penicillin G (50%), followed by kanamycin (25%) and streptomycin (25%).

Development of a loop-mediated isothermal amplification method for detecting virulentRhodococcus equi

“…The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of the 3 diagnostic tests were determined by comparing with bacterial culture, which is the gold standard test of R. equi . 2,9,16 Agreement between bacterial culture and each molecular test was measured by calculating the kappa coefficient with a commercial software program. g The values of the kappa coefficients were interpreted according to the criteria of a previous report 14 : poor agreement, <0; slight agreement, 0.01–0.20; fair agreement, 0.21–0.40; moderate agreement, 0.41–0.60; substantial agreement, 0.61–0.80; almost perfect agreement, 0.81–1.00.…”

Prevalence of Rhodococcus equi from the nasal cavity of 1010 apparently healthy horses

“…The prevalence of 90% avirulent isolates is consistent with the virulence profile observed in R. equi from faecal and soil samples . Previous studies on R. equi isolates from healthy donkeys and horses have not characterised their virulence profile . The current study included farms with swine which can be a source of vapB ‐positive R. equi for the environment and consequently to horses .…”

“…Prevalence found in other studies is slightly higher. In Ethiopia, 2.7% of healthy donkeys were positive for R. equi in samples from nasal swabs [17], and in Northern India, R. equi was found in 2.6% and 3.1% of nasopharyngeal swabs from healthy horses collected in 2013 and 2015, respectively [18,19]. Although the current isolation rate is lower than in previous reports, direct comparison among studies is difficult because of the differences in the experimental methods, design and geographical locations.…”

Resistotypes of Rhodococcus equi isolated from foals with respiratory problems

“…It can be responsible for infection in humans compromised by immunosuppressive drug therapy, lymphoma or AIDS (Takai et al, 1995;Mizuno et al, 2005;Napoleao et al, 2005). R. equi has been ranked one of the most important disease problems in the horse industry especially because of its high prevalence and mortality rate (Blood-Horse, 2009;Muscatello, 2009;Elissalde et al, 1980;Mir et al, 2015).…”