The prevalence of small flukes in domestic cats in Ben Tre province and their species identification by morphology and molecular markers

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of small flukes in the domestic cats in Binh Dai and Chau Thanh districts, Ben Tre province from August 2015 to September 2016 and to identify their species by morphological characteristics and molecular markers. A total of 61 cats were necropsied to find the small flukes. The collected flukes were identified firstly by morphological characteristics, then five fluke samples were randomly collected for DNA extraction. After that PCR was conducted with specific primers and ITS+ gene sequence.The investigated results showed that the domestic cats in Ben Tre were infected with flukes with the rate of 18.03%. The infected rate with flukes of the cats older than 24 months was (24.24%) higher than that of the cats at 13-24 months old (0.07%). Four species of flukes were detected, of which three species were found in liver and bile, including Opisthorchis felineus (14.57%), Platynosomum fastosum (3.28%), Opisthorchis viverrini (1.64%) and one (Amphimerus pseudofelineus) was found in intestine (3.28%).  Comparison of nucleotide sequence of the two gene segments encoding ITS+ of the 2 small fluke samples identified in cats with those from GenBank confirmed that 2 fluke samples belonged to species O.viverrini. This result indicates that determination of small fluke species based on morphological characteristics is applicable.