Advanced studies on toxocara species infecting animals in Egypt / Shimaa Abdelradi Fahmi ; Supervised Olfat Anter Mahdy Ahmed , Waheed M. A. Mousa , Sahar Zayed Abdelmaogood

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Veterinary Medicine - Department of Parasitology

Toxocariasis is a parasitic disease caused by Toxocara species inducing sever economic and public health problems all over the world. Fecal examination revealed that the total incidence of T. vitulorum infection in Cairo, Giza and Elfayoum governorates was 11.3% and 33.4% in buffaloes and buffalo calves, respectively. 5.6% of these buffaloes were harboring larvae in their colostrum/ milk. Evaluation of the immunogenicity and diagnostic sensitivity of three T. vitulorum antigens as ESAg, PeAg and EEAg , revealed that PeAg was the most sensitive antigen. Screening of the serum samples using ELISA versus PeAg revealed 22.6% and 37.5% infection rate in buffaloes and buffalo calves, respectively. PeAg produced absolute protection from challenge infection after immunization of Wistar white rats than the other two antigens. This reflected on the number of migrating larvae and histopathological changes in rats' organs. Fractionation of the three T. vitulorum and T. canis antigens using SDS-PAGE and determination of the specific bands using EITB with RHIS revealed that fractions of 67 and 57 kDa were specific bands to T. vitulorum and T. canis, respectively. While using sera collected from naturally infected buffaloes and calves revealed that the bands of M.W. 105, 90, 67, 19 and 11 kDa reacted specifically with special remarks for the fraction of 67 kDa in T. vitulorum PeAg. Molecular characterization of T. vitulorum from buffaloes and cattle and T. canis of dogs was performed by analysis of Atpase-6, 12S and ITS-2 genes which revealed that T. vitulorum of cattle and buffalo almost identical. While ATPase-6 and 12S regions showed 87.9% identity between T. vitulorum and T. canis and only 70% identity was revealed in ITS-2 region

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