Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
TROPICAL ANIMAL HEALTH AND PRODUCTION, cilt.57, sa.542, ss.1-11, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
Trypanosoma theileri is a vector-borne parasitic pathogen and can affect a wide range of hosts. Although this parasite is known to have a low pathogenicity in animals, in some cases, it can cause clinical infections in animals. Although most of the studies on the epidemiology of T. theileri have been conducted in cattle, there are limited studies investigating the pathogen in small ruminants. There is no information on the epidemiology of T. theileri in small ruminants in Türkiye. In present study, 765 small ruminant (428 from sheep and 337 from goats) blood samples obtained from different provinces of Türkiye were investigated for T. theileri using specific Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and DNA sequencing. A total of 0.52% (4/765) of examined samples were detected to be positive by PCR. All positive samples were obtained from sheep, with the prevalence at 0.93% (4/428), while the parasite was not detected in goat samples. Moreover, DNA sequence analyses of the CATL gene were done in all positive samples, and the obtained consensus sequences were deposited to GenBank with accession numbers PV854303- PV854306. BLASTn analyses revealed that 92.44–100% nucleotide similarities were present between our T. theileri isolates and T. theileri isolates present in the GenBank. Moreover, further phylogenetic analyses have shown that high nucleotide diversities were present between T. theileri genotypes (TthI and TthII), and SNPs were observed at 18 locations of the partial sequence of CATL gene between genotypes. Trypanosoma theileri detected in this study had high nucleotide similarity with the TthII genotype. In conclusion, to our knowledge, this study provides the first molecularly confirmed detection of T. theileri in sheep from Europe and documents the TthII lineage in sheep for the first time. Given the small number of positives, larger standardized surveys are warranted to clarify epidemiological and clinical implications.