The Molecular Study of Babesia Species in the Cattles of Mazandaran Province

Subject Areas : Journal of Animal Biology

Nasrollah Vahedi Nouri ¹ (Animal Parasitic Disease Research Department, Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Iran)
Vahid Noaman ² (Animal Parasitic Disease Research Department, Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Iran)

Received: 2019-12-13 Accepted : 2020-05-10 Published : 2020-06-20

Keywords: cattle, Mazandaran, Babesia species, Molecular,

Abstract :

Different Babesia species originating from the Apicomplexa family are the parasites existing in red blood cells, and they can widely affect the domestic and wild animal and also human. Babesiosis is a serious disease in cattle breeding industry that has affected more than 0.5 billion of the cattles in the world. This study has been performed aiming to determine the Babesia species in the cattles of Mazandaran province. A total number of 210 blood samples were randomly collected from the jugular vein of the cattles. In the beginning, the DNA extracted from the blood sampleswas replicated with a primer pair  replicating a 400-bp fragment of the Babesia 18S rRNA gene. All the positive bovine samples were examined with the specific semi nested-PCR for checking Babesia bigemina and Babesia bovis. The results showed that the overall prevalence rates of Babesia bigemina and Babesia bovis infection in the cattles were 33.33% and 28.6%, respectively. Chi-square test was used to compare the prevalence of the infetion in terms of seasons, the livestock age, and the type of livestock husbandry (traditional - semi-industrial). SPSS software was used for data analysis and the significance level was considered p < 0.05. The results of this study show that Babesiosis is one of the most important diseases in the cattles of Mazandaran province, especially in the seasons of the ticks activity.

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