The epidemiology of Rickettsia felis infecting fleas of companion animals in eastern Australia

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Author(s)
Teoh, Yen Thon
Hii, Sze Fui
Graves, Stephen
Rees, Robert
Stenos, John
Traub, Rebecca Justine
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2018
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Abstract
Background: Flea-borne spotted fever (FBSF) caused by Rickettsia felis is an arthropod-borne zoonosis. This study aimed to determine the prevalence, primary species and genotype(s) of R. felis infecting fleas from dogs and cats. Results: All fleas were identified as Ctenocephalides felis felis. All rickettsial DNA detected in fleas was identified as being 100% homologous to R. felis URRWXCal2, with positivity within tropical, subtropical and temperate regions noted at 6.7%, 13.2% and 15.5%, respectively. Toy/small breed dogs were found to be at a lower odds of harboring R. felis-positive fleas compared with large breed dogs ...
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Journal Title
PARASITES & VECTORS
Volume
11
DOI
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is 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.
Subject
Medical microbiology
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