Report of a case of dog infection with Hepatozoon canis(Apicomplexa: Adeleorina) parasite in north of Iran

Background and Aim : Blood parasites of the genus Hepatozoon (Apicomplexa, Hepatozoidae)infect all groups of terrestrial vertebrates. Canine hepatozoonosis is recognised as a clinical diseaseranging from relatively asymptomatic in low level cases, to severe in high level cases. Typicalcharacteristics include fever, lethargy, myalgia, lameness and mucopurulent ocular discharge insevere cases. Reasons for the difference in the clinical signs between the two species, apart frominfection to novel hosts, may be due to the fact that merogonic development takes place in differenttarget organs. H. canis primarily infects the spleen, bone marrow and lymph nodes. The aim ofthis study was detection of H.canis in stray dogs from Guilan province, Iran by molecular method.Methods : To assign distribution of this parasite, a total number of ۱۰ blood samples werecollected from different randomly selected dogs from Guilan province. The smears prepared andstained by Gimsa solution (۱۰%) and Light microscop was used to examination of blood smears.The parasite samples were used to molecular analysis.Results : The microscopic results showed that one of samples was infected by parasites. PCR wasruned with۱۸s RNA and its product was sequenced by sanger method. Based on the molecular ۱۸sRNA gene blast, the parasite recognaized as Hepatozoon canis.Conclusion : This is the first report of molecular detection of H.canis in stray dogs from Guilanprovince, Iran. Because of few molecular studies on Hepatozoon species, and because of thehumidity of this region and suitable conditions for the activity of ticks, more studies arerecommended.

کلیدواژه ها:

Hepatozoon canis ، Molecular detection ، Stray dog ، Hepatozoonosis