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Prevalence and molecular characterisation of Sarcocystis miescheriana and Sarcocystis suihominis in wild boars (Sus scrofa) in Italy

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Abstract

A sample of the diaphragm was collected from each of 100 wild boars legally hunted in the Val Grande National Park in north-western Italy and examined for the presence of Sarcocystis infection by histological and molecular methods. In histological sections, thick-walled sarcocysts consistent with those of Sarcocystis miescheriana were detected in 32 wild boars. Genomic DNA extracted from diaphragm samples was initially subjected to PCR amplification of the internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) region, and 97 wild boars were found to harbour a Sarcocystis infection at this screening. Selected DNA samples were then subjected to PCR amplification and sequencing of the ITS1 region and the 18S and 28S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes of the nuclear ribosomal DNA unit, while all positive samples were subjected to PCR amplification of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (cox1) gene. S. miescheriana was identified in 97 wild boars (97%), while the zoonotic Sarcocystis suihominis was identified in one wild boar (1%), which also harboured S. miescheriana. Intra-specific sequence variation was found in all four DNA regions of S. miescheriana examined and in the 18S rRNA gene and ITS1 region of S. suihominis. The partial cox1 gene was amplified and sequenced from 72 isolates of S. miescheriana, yielding 43 haplotypes with pairwise sequence identities of 97.6–99.9%. These haplotypes were 79.1–79.8% identical with the cox1 sequence of S. suihominis. Phylogeny based on cox1 sequences placed S. miescheriana and S. suihominis as sister species within a clade comprising mainly Sarcocystis spp. of ruminants with felids as known or presumed definitive hosts. The same was true for the phylogeny based on 18S rRNA gene sequences.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Comprensorio Alpino VCO1 of Verbania and their hunters for their help with the sampling of the wild boars.

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  1. Alessia Libera Gazzonis and Bjørn Gjerde contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Veterinary Medicine, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 10, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Alessia Libera Gazzonis, Luca Villa, Stefano Minazzi, Sergio Aurelio Zanzani, Pietro Riccaboni, Giuseppe Sironi & Maria Teresa Manfredi

  2. Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Food Safety and Infection Biology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P. O. Box 369, Sentrum, 0102, Oslo, Norway

    Bjørn Gjerde

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  1. Alessia Libera Gazzonis
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Correspondence to Bjørn Gjerde.

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The wild boars used in the present study were legally hunted as part of an approved depopulation plan for the Val Grande National Park (see the section “Materials and methods” and Gazzonis et al. 2018 for details).

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Gazzonis, A.L., Gjerde, B., Villa, L. et al. Prevalence and molecular characterisation of Sarcocystis miescheriana and Sarcocystis suihominis in wild boars (Sus scrofa) in Italy. Parasitol Res 118, 1271–1287 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-019-06249-2

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