Presence of Non-Tuberculous Mycobacteria Including subsp. Associated with Environmental Amoebae.

One of the obstacles to eradicating or Johne's Disease (JD) seems to be the persistence of subsp. () in the environment due to its ability to survive alone or vectorized. It has been shown that is widely distributed in soils and water. Previously, we isolated amoebae associated with strains in the environment of bovines from an infected herd. This work aims to verify our working hypothesis, which suggests that amoebae may play a role in the transmission of JD. In this study, we sampled water in the vicinity of herds infected with or () and searched for amoebae and mycobacteria. Live amoebae were recovered from all samples. Among these amoebae, four isolates associated with the presence of mycobacteria were identified and characterized. and other mycobacterial species were detected by qPCR and, in some cases, by culture. This study suggests that amoebae and may be found in the same environment and might represent a risk of exposure of animals to pathogenic mycobacteria. These data open up new perspectives on the control measures to be put in place to prevent contamination by .