Zieman Elliott A, Jiménez F Agustín, Nielsen Clayton K
* Department of Zoology, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 1125 Lincoln Dr., Carbondale, Illinois 62901-6501. Correspondence should be sent to Elliott A. Zieman at:
J Parasitol. 2017 Aug;103(4):343-348. doi: 10.1645/16-133. Epub 2017 Mar 29.
Cytauxzoon felis is an intraerythrocytic apicomplexan of felids enzootic in the southeastern United States. In domestic cats (Felis catus), this parasite can result in the highly fatal disease cytauxzoonosis or bobcat fever. Bobcats (Lynx rufus) are the wild animal reservoir host. To date, the characterization of prevalence of C. felis in bobcats is mostly based on broad-scale surveys from hunter-harvested specimens collected across large geographic areas, usually consisting of multiple states. Detailed studies on the development, transmission, distribution, effects, and prevalence of C. felis in the tick vectors are scarce. To fill some of these gaps in the literature, such as prevalence in ticks and bobcats in a discrete region, we examined bobcats and ticks in an 8,000-km portion of southern Illinois. We screened for C. felis using a nested polymerase chain reaction that amplifies a fragment of the nuclear small subunit (SSU) 18S rRNA. We screened 125 individual bobcats collected in southern Illinois from 2003 to 2015; of these, 70.6% were positive for C. felis. In addition, we screened 214 ticks of both vector species (Amblyomma americanum and Dermacentor variabilis) and detected C. felis in 15.6% of them; this prevalence is higher than reported by previous surveys. Our study reports the prevalence of C. felis in ticks and bobcats from south Illinois. We found that 70.6% of bobcats and 15.6% of ticks were infected with C. felis, which suggests risk of transmission to domestic cats.
嗜吞噬细胞无形体是一种寄生于红细胞内的顶复门原虫，在美国东南部的猫科动物中呈地方流行性。在家猫（Felis catus）中，这种寄生虫可导致高度致命的疾病——嗜吞噬细胞无形体病或山猫热。山猫（Lynx rufus）是该寄生虫的野生动物储存宿主。迄今为止，关于嗜吞噬细胞无形体在山猫中的流行特征描述大多基于对从跨越大片地理区域（通常包括多个州）收集的猎人捕获样本进行的大规模调查。关于嗜吞噬细胞无形体在蜱传播媒介中的发育、传播、分布、影响和流行情况的详细研究很少。为了填补文献中的一些空白，比如一个离散区域内蜱和山猫中的流行情况，我们在伊利诺伊州南部8000公里的区域内对山猫和蜱进行了检查。我们使用巢式聚合酶链反应筛选嗜吞噬细胞无形体，该反应可扩增核小亚基（SSU）18S rRNA的一个片段。我们对2003年至2015年在伊利诺伊州南部收集的125只个体山猫进行了筛选；其中，70.6%的山猫嗜吞噬细胞无形体呈阳性。此外，我们对两种传播媒介蜱（美洲钝眼蜱和变异革蜱）中的214只蜱进行了筛选，在其中15.6%的蜱中检测到了嗜吞噬细胞无形体；这一流行率高于之前调查报道的结果。我们的研究报告了伊利诺伊州南部蜱和山猫中嗜吞噬细胞无形体的流行情况。我们发现70.6%的山猫和15.6%的蜱感染了嗜吞噬细胞无形体，这表明存在传播给家猫的风险。
