Toxocara canis and Toxocara cati in Stray Dogs and Cats in Bangkok, Thailand: Molecular Prevalence and Risk Factors

Abstract

Toxocara canis and Toxocara cati are known as common roundworm in dogs and cats, respectively. The objective of the current study was to determine the molecular prevalence and risk factors associated with T. canis and T. cati infections in stray dogs and cats, respectively, in Bangkok, Thailand. In total, 1000 fecal samples (from 500 dogs and 500 cats) were collected from stray dogs and cats residing in Bangkok temples. DNA was extracted and screened for T. canis and T. cati using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region. The overall prevalence of T. canis in the stray dogs was 5.4% (27/500) and 0.6% (3/500) for T. cati in the stray cats. Toxocara canis infections were detected in stray dogs from 11 out of 48 districts (22.9%), with Bang Khen district having the highest proportion of infected dogs, whereas T. cati infections were only detected in the stray cats in Lat Krabang district. These results indicated that stray animals residing in Bangkok temples pose a considerable public health risk due to zoonotic parasites, especially T. canis.

Environmental soil contamination with zoonotic soil-transmitted helminths in the temple grounds of Chachoengsao Province, Thailand

“…and hookworm/ strongylid. This result concurred with the previous studies reporting that these two types of helminths were often detected in dog fecal samples and soil samples from Thai temples [3,5,33,37]. However, several other potentially zoonotic soil-transmitted helminths were recorded in the soil samples, including Trichuris spp., Strongyloides spp., Taenia spp., and Ascaris spp.…”

“…was found in greater numbers than other helminths, because the soil was contaminated with fecal material from infected dogs and cats, and Toxocara spp. was the most common parasitic nematode causing functional digestive disorders in dogs and cats worldwide [33]. Our findings demonstrated that the major intestinal parasite species infecting dogs and cats in the soil samples was Toxocara spp., which poses a significant risk of zoonotic transmission to humans.…”

Toxocariasis in Ghanaian neighbourhoods: a need for action

“…[ 8 ] and Phoosangwalthong et al. [ 21 ] documented a prevalence of 4.5% and 5.4% of dogs infected with T. canis respectively, while a relatively higher prevalence of 29.4% was reported in Australia [ 22 ].…”

Toxocariasis

“…In dogs and cats, the diagnosis is mainly carried out by coprological examination of eggs in faeces under the microscope (Gates and Nolan 2009;Okulewicz et al 2012), by serological tests, such as ELISA (for antibody or antigen detection) and Western blot (Noordin et al 2020) or by molecular methods, for example, PCR (Khademvatan et al 2013; O ̈ge and Özbakiş-Beceri̇kli̇soy 2019; Phoosangwalthong et al 2022), and loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) technique (Azimian et al 2021). In the case of humans, the diagnosis of Toxocara larvae may be accomplished by the detection of specific IgG antibodies against the parasite using serological tests (Zhan et al 2015;Rostami et al 2019b;Noordin et al 2020) or by the detection of Toxocara larvae antigens by molecular assays (Despommier 2003;De et al 2013).…”