Incidence of toxoplasma infection in zoo animals

Although felids are the definitive hosts of Toxoplasma, all warm-blooded animals, including birds, serve as intermediate hosts. Researchers evaluated the incidence of Toxoplasma infection in animals at a Zoo.

An indirect multispecies ELISA was used to screen for Toxoplasma infection in 326 serum samples collected from 75 species of animals. The infection rate of Toxoplasma with the ELISA test was 27% .

A commercial latex agglutination (LAT) assay was used to re-examine the samples with uncertain ELISA results and the infection rate increased to 36.2% and sequence analysis revealed that at least three Toxoplasma variants were infecting the animals at the zoo.

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Investigation of Toxoplasma infection in zoo animals using multispecies ELISA and GRA7 nested PCR