Friday, August 10, 2007

Toxoplasma gondii and ovine toxoplasmosis

Vet Parasitol. 2007 Aug 6; [Epub ahead of print]

Toxoplasma gondii and ovine toxoplasmosis: New aspects of an old story

Buxton D, Maley SW, Wright SE, Rodger S, Bartley P, Innes EA

Moredun Research Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Ovine toxoplasmosis, caused by the intracellular protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii, was first described in 1954 and while the incidence of ovine infection is difficult to define, it has been reported that in the UK it is responsible for between 1 and 2% of neonatal losses per annum. Recent reports have suggested that sheep persistently infected with T. gondii may pass infection to the fetus in subsequent pregnancies more readily than previously thought. These data show a high proportion of both successful and failed pregnancies in sheep to be positive by PCR for T. gondii with a tendency for samples from certain genetic lines of Charollais sheep more likely to be positive than samples from other lines, suggesting that some sheep have a particular genetic susceptibility to T. gondii.

PMID: 17686585 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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