A Pilot Study for the Characterization of spp. and Analysis of Possible / Correlation.

Differentiating between species is relevant in human medicine. toxins might be effective against , a nematode causing relevant human morbidity. Our first objective was to evaluate genomic and MALDI-TOF identification methods for . Our secondary objective was to evaluate a possible negative selection pressure of against . PCR and Sanger were compared to MALDI-TOF on a collection of 44 group strains. toxin genes were searched on 17 stool samples from -infected and uninfected dogs. Metagenomic rRNA was used for microbiome composition. The inter-rate agreement between PCR, Sanger, and MALDI-TOF was 0.631 k (-value = 6.4 × 10). toxins were not found in dogs' stool. and were the major phyla in the dogs' microbiome (both represented >20% of the total bacterial community). was underrepresented in all -positive dogs. However, the general composition of bacterial communities was not significantly linked with infection. The genomic methods allowed accurate differentiation between and . There was no association between and infection, but further studies are needed to confirm this finding. We provide the first descriptive results about bacterial fecal composition in dogs with infection.