Global Prevalence Estimates of Toxascaris leonina Infection in Dogs and Cats
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Riahi, Seyed Mohammad
Omrani, Vahid Fallah
Wang, Tao
Hofmann, Andreas
Mirzapour, Aliyar
Foroutan, Masoud
Fakhri, Yadolah
Macpherson, Calum NL
Gasser, Robin B
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Abstract
Toxascaris leonina is an ascaridoid nematode of dogs and cats; this parasite affects the health of these animals. This study estimated the global prevalence of Ta. leonina infection in dogs and cats using random effects meta-analysis as well as subgroup, meta-regression and heterogeneity analyses. The data were stratified according to geographical region, the type of dogs and cats and environmental variables. A quantitative analysis of 135 published studies, involving 119,317 dogs and 25,364 cats, estimated prevalence rates of Ta. leonina in dogs and cats at 2.9% and 3.4%, respectively. Prevalence was highest in the Eastern Mediterranean region (7.2% for dogs and 10.0% for cats) and was significantly higher in stray dogs (7.0% vs. 1.5%) and stray cats (7.5% vs. 1.8%) than in pets. The findings indicate that, worldwide, ~26 million dogs and ~23 million cats are infected with Ta. leonina; these animals would shed substantial numbers of Ta. leonina eggs into the environment each year and might represent reservoirs of infection to other accidental or paratenic hosts. It is important that populations of dogs and cats as well as other canids and felids be monitored and dewormed for Ta. leonina and (other) zoonotic helminths.
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Pathogens
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9
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6
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© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Biological sciences
Immunology
Medical microbiology
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Microbiology
Toxascaris leonina
global prevalence
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Rostami, A; Riahi, SM; Omrani, VF; Wang, T; Hofmann, A; Mirzapour, A; Foroutan, M; Fakhri, Y; Macpherson, CNL; Gasser, RB, Global Prevalence Estimates of Toxascaris leonina Infection in Dogs and Cats, Pathogens, 2020, 9 (6), pp. 503