Zoonotic Agents in Feral Pigeons (Columba livia) from Costa Rica: Possible Improvements to Diminish Contagion Risks

Abstract

Most studies on zoonotic agents in pigeons have been conducted in the Palearctic region, but the scarcity of data is notorious in the Neotropical region, where these birds can breed all year around and are in close contact with humans. In this study, we used a combination of culture-dependent and culture-independent methods to identify infectious agents in 141 fecal samples from pigeons collected at four urban parks from Costa Rica. Of these we identified 34 positive samples for Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Braenderup (24.1%), 13 for Chlamydophila psittaci (9.2%), 9 for enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (6.4% eaeA, 0% stx-1 and 0% stx-2), and 2 for Campylobacter jejuni (1.4%). These populations of pigeons pose low risk for healthy adult humans, however, they may pose a health risk to immunocompromised patients or children. This study provides scientific data, which can be incorporated into educational programs aiming to reverse the public attitude toward pigeon feeding and to rationally justify population control efforts.

Epidemiological Study on Prevalence, Serovar Diversity, Multidrug Resistance, and CTX-M-Type Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamases of Salmonella spp. from Patients with Diarrhea, Food of Animal Origin, and Pets in Several Provinces of China

“…Our findings support the assertion that pets are important reservoirs of infections; specifically, we observed an overall prevalence of Salmonella spp. in pet fecal samples of 14.6% (pigeons, 15.0%; turtles, 14.5%), which were lower than that in Costa Rica (pigeons, 24.1%) and South Korea (turtles, 50%) but higher than that in a previous study in China (pigeons, 4.1%) (40)(41)(42). An estimated 11% of all Salmonella infections are attributed to animal exposure annually in the United States, with the highest rates of illness and death occurring among children (43).…”

Can domestic pigeon be a potential carrier of zoonotic Salmonella ?

“…Most of the epidemiological data concerning infections of pigeons with Salmonella spp. are based on investigations of feral pigeons (Dovc et al., 2004 ; Gargiulo et al., 2014 ; Haesebrouck et al., 2016 ; de Oliveira et al., 2018 ; de Sousa et al., 2010 ; Torres‐Mejía et al., 2018 ) and only a few derive from studies conducted with ornamental and racing pigeons (Stenzel et al., 2014 ; Teske et al., 2013 ). Pigeon breeding is still a popular and time‐consuming hobby (which leads to the long exposure of humans to pigeon pathogens), and given that these birds could be carriers of Salmonella , the human health hazard is real (Israili & Iqbal, 2017 ).…”

First isolation of atypical enteropathogenic Escherichia coli from geese (Anser anser domestica) and first description of atypical EPEC from turkeys and pigeons in Hungary

“…Our findings in pigeons are in harmony with the results of other scientist in that pigeons can carry aEPEC. However, the comparison with the findings of other researchers was very limited because they focused on searching antibiotic resistance and virulence genes of E. coli and did not record the age of sampled pigeons which may influence E. coli pathogroups distribution [26,[28][29][30].…”