Abstract
Protozoan parasites of the genus Babesia and Theileria are significant tick-borne pathogens of domestic animals and cause economic losses to the livestock industry in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. In this study, 274 blood samples and 32 tick samples were collected from four counties of Wuwei City in northwestern China in June and July in 2018. The DNA from the field samples was analyzed for Babesia or Theileria infection using specific PCR and sequencing based on 18S rRNA gene fragments. The total infection rates were 0.4% for B. motasi and T. separata (both 1/274) in sheep, 3.1% for T. annulata (1/32), 6.2% for B. occultans (2/32) and 9.4% for B. bigemina (3/32) in ticks, respectively. In particular, T. separata has been for the first time detected in sheep in China and B. occultans in Hyalomma asiaticum from Gansu Province of China.
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Funding
This study was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFD0501200), ASTIP (CAAS-ASTIP-2016-LVRI), Jiangsu Co-innovation Center Programme for Prevention and Control of Important Animal Infectious Disease and Zoonose.
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Designed the study: Jianxun Luo, Hong Yin, Guanquan Guan, and Ming Sun, performed the experiments: Ming Sun, Jinming Wang, Junlong Liu, and Jianlin Xu, analyzed the data: Zhijie Liu and Youquan Li, wrote the paper: Ming Sun, Jinming Wang, Zhijie Liu, Junlong Liu, Youquan Li, Jianlin Xu, Guanquan Guan, Hong Yin, and Jianxun Luo supervised all work. All authors have read and approve the final version of the manuscript.
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The collection and manipulation of blood samples were approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of the Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. All sampling procedures were handled in accordance with the Animal Ethics Procedures and Guidelines of the People’s Republic of China.
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Sun, M., Wang, J., Liu, Z. et al. First molecular evidence of Babesia occultans and Theileria separata infection in ticks and sheep in China. Exp Appl Acarol 78, 223–229 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10493-019-00369-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10493-019-00369-1