Occurrence of Toxoplasma gondii in raw goat, sheep, and camel milk in Upper Egypt

Vet World Vol.11 September-2018 Article-10

Research Article

Veterinary World, 11(9): 1262-1265

https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2018.1262-1265

Nagah M. Saad¹, Asmaa A. A. Hussein², and Rania M. Ewida³

1. Department of Food Hygiene (Milk Hygiene), Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Assiut University, Asyut, Egypt.
2. Department of Animal Hygiene and Zoonoses, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Assiut University, Asyut, Egypt.
3. Department of Food Hygiene (Milk Hygiene), Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, New Valley Branch, Assiut University, Asyut, Egypt.

Background and Aim: Toxoplasmosis is a worldwide zoonotic disease with harmful effects on animal and human health. Ingestion of contaminated raw milk has been suggested as a vehicle for transmission of Toxoplasma gondii to human. The present study was performed for the detection of T. gondii in raw milk samples of goat, sheep, and camel in Upper Egypt using two different techniques (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay [ELISA] and quantitative polymerase chain reaction [qPCR]).

Materials and Methods: This study was conducted to determine the T. gondii prevalence using ELISA and qPCR in raw goat, sheep, and camels milk (30 samples for each) collected from different locations in Upper Egypt.

Results: T. gondii IgG antibodies were detected in 90.0, 60.0, and 3.33% of goat, sheep, and camel milk samples, respectively. From the positive samples of T. gondii IgG, the parasitic DNA was detected only in two examined milk samples, one of them was present in goat milk sample and another one was found in sheep milk sample. On the other hand, the parasite was not detected in camels' milk samples.

Conclusion: These results concluded that the raw milk was contaminated by T. gondii tachyzoites which could be a source of human infection. Restricted hygienic programs should be implemented in the animal farms to decrease the risk of milk contamination by this parasite. Keywords: camel milk, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, goat milk, quantitative polymerase chain reaction, sheep milk, Toxoplasma gondii.

Keywords: camel milk, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, goat milk, quantitative polymerase chain reaction, sheep milk, Toxoplasma gondii.

How to cite this article: Saad NM, Hussein AAA, Ewida RM (2018) Occurrence of Toxoplasma gondii in raw goat, sheep, and camel milk in Upper Egypt, Veterinary World, 11(9): 1262-1265.

Received: 20-04-2018 Accepted: 27-07-2018 Published online: 15-09-2018

Corresponding author: Rania M. Ewida E-mail: r_ewida@aun.edu.eg

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2018.1262-1265

Copyright: Saad, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.