Molecular identification of species from pneumonic goats, Iraq.

BACKGROUND

In goats, acute and chronic respiratory infections are often characterized by a rapidly progressing clinical course with little opportunity to develop an effective antibiotic therapy.

AIM

This study aimed to identify spp. in pneumonic goats, assess its antibiotic susceptibility, and confirm the molecular phylogenetics of spp.

METHODS

A total of 80 pneumonic goats were selected from the slaughterhouses located in Basra province (Iraq) from June to November 2023, and each animal was subjected to obtaining only one sample. The studied samples were included 30 nasal swabs obtained from the lived goats, while 30 lung samples in addition to 20 tracheal swabs were collected from slaughtered goats. All study samples were inoculated onto MacConkey agar and tested biochemically. Eleven types of antibiotics were served in the Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method to identify the susceptibility of spp. Positive culture isolates were tested molecularly using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and then sequenced for phylogenetic analysis of study isolates.

RESULTS

The findings indicated that 35% of samples were positive to spp. including 30% in trachea, 33.33% in nasal swabs, and 40% in lungs. colonies appeared on MacConkey agar as bright pink mucoid texture; while on blood agar, they were large, glossy, mucoid, whitish-grey, spherical, and free of hemolysis. Biochemically, all isolates were exhibited a negative reactivity to motility, oxidase, indole, and methyl red, but positives to urease, citrate utilization, catalase, and Voges-Proskauer, acid and gas production. Antibiotic susceptibility testing revealed the high susceptibility of isolates to meropenem (71.43%), and intermediate susceptibility to ciprofloxacin (28.57%), but high resistance to imipenem (60.71%). Targeting the gene, PCR results confirmed all tested isolates as spp. Finally, phylogenetic analysis of 9 positive isolates demonstrated the identity of local isolates to (no = 4), (no = 3), (no = 1), and (no = 1).

CONCLUSION

Our study confirms the presence of , , and in pneumonic goats, highlighting the importance of molecular phylogeny in the detection of new species. However, furthermore studies are necessary to investigate various species/strains in goats and other domestic animals.