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Toxoplasma gondii in the Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) in northern Italy

BACKGROUND: Identifying factors that sustain parasite transmission is important for understanding their spread and emergence, including how changes in biodiversity may affect parasite prevalence and spread. Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite infecting humans and animals. Birds can acquire T....

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Autores principales: Iemmi, Tiziano, Vismarra, Alice, Mangia, Carlo, Zanin, Rolando, Genchi, Marco, Lanfranchi, Paolo, Kramer, Laura Helen, Formenti, Nicoletta, Ferrari, Nicola
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7236205/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32429990
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-020-04134-x
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author Iemmi, Tiziano
Vismarra, Alice
Mangia, Carlo
Zanin, Rolando
Genchi, Marco
Lanfranchi, Paolo
Kramer, Laura Helen
Formenti, Nicoletta
Ferrari, Nicola
author_facet Iemmi, Tiziano
Vismarra, Alice
Mangia, Carlo
Zanin, Rolando
Genchi, Marco
Lanfranchi, Paolo
Kramer, Laura Helen
Formenti, Nicoletta
Ferrari, Nicola
author_sort Iemmi, Tiziano
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Identifying factors that sustain parasite transmission is important for understanding their spread and emergence, including how changes in biodiversity may affect parasite prevalence and spread. Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite infecting humans and animals. Birds can acquire T. gondii infection through ingestion either of oocysts from the ground or of tissue cysts present in infected prey and are therefore suitable indicators of the presence of T. gondii in the natural environment. METHODS: The aim of the study included the evaluation of T. gondii seroprevalence in clinically healthy Eurasian kestrels (Falco tinnunculus) using a modified agglutination test. Birds were captured in a small area of Parma (northern Italy) for two consecutive years (2016–2017), sex and age determined and serological study carried out. Food sources for the birds were also evaluated, in particular rodent and grasshopper population estimates in the study area. The biomass of rodents and grasshoppers per hectare was estimated in order to directly compare food availability. Statistical analyses were performed in order to evaluate factors influencing the probability of kestrels being T. gondii-seropositive using R 3.4.4 fitting linear mixed-effect models with the ‘glmer’ function of the package lme4, ‘lsmean’ in package lsmean for pair-wise post-hoc comparisons using differences of least square means (DLSM) and the ‘betareg’ function of the package betareg for beta regression. RESULTS: Seroprevalence for T. gondii was 33.3% (49/147) in 2016, while in 2017 seroprevalence decreased to 14.3% (13/91). An increase in the probability of kestrels being T. gondii-seropositive was associated with a higher rodent biomass in the environment, suggesting a positive feedback of the biotic factors driving infection risk. CONCLUSIONS: These results underline the need for multidisciplinary studies aimed at better understanding pathogen-host relationships and for predictions in disease ecology. [Image: see text]
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spelling pubmed-72362052020-05-27 Toxoplasma gondii in the Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) in northern Italy Iemmi, Tiziano Vismarra, Alice Mangia, Carlo Zanin, Rolando Genchi, Marco Lanfranchi, Paolo Kramer, Laura Helen Formenti, Nicoletta Ferrari, Nicola Parasit Vectors Research BACKGROUND: Identifying factors that sustain parasite transmission is important for understanding their spread and emergence, including how changes in biodiversity may affect parasite prevalence and spread. Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite infecting humans and animals. Birds can acquire T. gondii infection through ingestion either of oocysts from the ground or of tissue cysts present in infected prey and are therefore suitable indicators of the presence of T. gondii in the natural environment. METHODS: The aim of the study included the evaluation of T. gondii seroprevalence in clinically healthy Eurasian kestrels (Falco tinnunculus) using a modified agglutination test. Birds were captured in a small area of Parma (northern Italy) for two consecutive years (2016–2017), sex and age determined and serological study carried out. Food sources for the birds were also evaluated, in particular rodent and grasshopper population estimates in the study area. The biomass of rodents and grasshoppers per hectare was estimated in order to directly compare food availability. Statistical analyses were performed in order to evaluate factors influencing the probability of kestrels being T. gondii-seropositive using R 3.4.4 fitting linear mixed-effect models with the ‘glmer’ function of the package lme4, ‘lsmean’ in package lsmean for pair-wise post-hoc comparisons using differences of least square means (DLSM) and the ‘betareg’ function of the package betareg for beta regression. RESULTS: Seroprevalence for T. gondii was 33.3% (49/147) in 2016, while in 2017 seroprevalence decreased to 14.3% (13/91). An increase in the probability of kestrels being T. gondii-seropositive was associated with a higher rodent biomass in the environment, suggesting a positive feedback of the biotic factors driving infection risk. CONCLUSIONS: These results underline the need for multidisciplinary studies aimed at better understanding pathogen-host relationships and for predictions in disease ecology. [Image: see text] BioMed Central 2020-05-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7236205/ /pubmed/32429990 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-020-04134-x Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 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 in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Iemmi, Tiziano
Vismarra, Alice
Mangia, Carlo
Zanin, Rolando
Genchi, Marco
Lanfranchi, Paolo
Kramer, Laura Helen
Formenti, Nicoletta
Ferrari, Nicola
Toxoplasma gondii in the Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) in northern Italy
title Toxoplasma gondii in the Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) in northern Italy
title_full Toxoplasma gondii in the Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) in northern Italy
title_fullStr Toxoplasma gondii in the Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) in northern Italy
title_full_unstemmed Toxoplasma gondii in the Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) in northern Italy
title_short Toxoplasma gondii in the Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) in northern Italy
title_sort toxoplasma gondii in the eurasian kestrel (falco tinnunculus) in northern italy
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7236205/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32429990
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-020-04134-x
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