Q fever: A neglected disease of camels in Giza and Cairo Provinces, Egypt

Vet World Vol.12 December-2019 Article-9

Research Article

Veterinary World, 12(12): 1945-1950

https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2019.1945-1950

Hend H. A. M. Abdullah¹, Hany A. Hussein^2,3, Khaled A. Abd El-Razik², Ashraf M. A. Barakat⁴, and Yousef A. Soliman⁵

1. Department of Parasitology and Animal Diseases, National Research Centre, Dokki, Giza, Egypt.
2. Department of Animal Reproduction and Artificial Insemination, National Research Centre, Dokki, Giza, Egypt.
3. Key Laboratory of Diagnostic and Detective Technology, Department of Veterinary Research , Guangdong Haid Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary, Guangzhou, China.
4. Department of Zoonotic Diseases, National Research Centre, Dokki, Giza, Egypt.
5. Department of Biotechnology, Central Laboratory for Evaluation of Veterinary Biologics, Abbasia, Cairo, Egypt.

Background and Aim: Q fever is a zoonotic disease caused by Coxiella burnetii. Cattle, sheep, and goat are the main reservoir of C. burnetii. In Egypt, the epidemiological data about C. burnetii in camels are limited. Therefore, the current study was conducted to identify C. burnetii infection in camels by different molecular tools and to estimate its seropositivity through the detection of anti-C. burnetii antibodies in camel sera.

Materials and Methods: Blood samples were collected 112 from camels in Giza and Cairo Provinces, Egypt. All blood samples were screened by trans-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (trans-qPCR) for C. burnetii and positive samples subjected to standard PCR using the superoxide dismutase enzyme coding gene of C. burnetii. Sera of studied camels were examined for the presence of antibodies against C. burnetii using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

Results: Out of 112 camels, 19 were positive for C. burnetii by qPCR with an overall prevalence of 16.9% (18.6% in Giza and 15.1% in Cairo Provinces, respectively). The seroprevalence of anti-C. burnetii IgG antibodies in the examined camels was 4.5% (5/112).

Conclusion: Trans-qPCR assay is a rapid and sensitive tool for the detection of C. burnetii in acute stage. Camels should be considered one of the major reservoirs for C. burnetii in Egypt. Keywords: camel, Coxiella burnetii, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, standard polymerase chain reaction, trans-quantitative polymerase chain reaction.

Keywords: camel, Coxiella burnetii, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, standard polymerase chain reaction, trans-quantitative polymerase chain reaction.

How to cite this article: Abdullah HHAM, Hussein HA, Abd El-Razik KA, Barakat AMA, Soliman YA (2019) Q fever: A neglected disease of camels in Giza and Cairo Provinces, Egypt, Veterinary World, 12(12): 1945-1950.

Received: 06-09-2019 Accepted: 06-11-2019 Published online: 12-12-2019

Corresponding author: Hend H. A. M. Abdullah E-mail: vet_nrc_2006@yahoo.com

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2019.1945-1950

Copyright: Abdullah HHAM, 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.