Suspected autochthonous Thelazia callipaeda infection in a dog in northern Germany

Abstract

A 12-year old Elo dog was presented with recurring symptoms of conjunctivitis in November 2019. A single whitish nematode was found upon inspection of the eye and identified as a Thelazia callipaeda male. The morphological identification of the eye worm was supported by analysis of a partial cytochrome c oxidase I (cox1) gene sequence. The dog lived in Lower Saxony, northwestern Germany, and had not visited regions known to be endemic for T. callipaeda. This suggests that a local transmission cycle of this zoonotic nematode may exist in Germany.

High genetic diversity of Babesia canis (Piana & Galli‐Valerio, 1895) in a recent local outbreak in Berlin/ Brandenburg, Germany

“…Prominent examples for this tendency are Dirofilaria repens (Capelli et al, 2018), Leishmania infantum (Maia et al, 2015), Thelazia callipaeda (Lebedewa et al, 2020) and B. canis (Mierzejewska et al, 2015). A prerequisite for the increasing incidence of autochthonous infections with B. canis is the high abundance of D. reticulatus ticks, which were found on dogs in the Berlin/Brandenburg area nearly as frequently as Ixodes ricinus (Beck et al, 2014).…”

“…Several canine vector‐borne diseases are spreading from Mediterranean and Eastern European regions into Central and even Northern Europe and this range expansion is at least partially driven by climate change (Baneth et al., 2012) but changes in land use as well as travelling of dogs to and import from endemic regions will surely also contribute. Prominent examples for this tendency are Dirofilaria repens (Capelli et al., 2018), Leishmania infantum (Maia et al., 2015), Thelazia callipaeda (Lebedewa et al., 2020) and B. canis (Mierzejewska et al., 2015). A prerequisite for the increasing incidence of autochthonous infections with B. canis is the high abundance of D. reticulatus ticks, which were found on dogs in the Berlin/Brandenburg area nearly as frequently as Ixodes ricinus (Beck et al., 2014).…”