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Case Reports
. 2017 Nov 23;13(1):348.
doi: 10.1186/s12917-017-1242-x.

A case report of pulmonary tritrichomonosis in a pig

Yuanyuan Shi  1 , Wei Jiang  2 , Zhiyong Ma  2 , Yafeng Qiu  3
Affiliations
Case Reports

A case report of pulmonary tritrichomonosis in a pig

Yuanyuan Shi et al. BMC Vet Res. .

Abstract

Background: Tritrichomonads like porcine Tritrichomonas foetus (previously named Tritrichomonas suis), can commensally live in nasal cavity of pigs, but it is rare to cause pulmonary tritrichomonosis.

Case presentation: A 40-day-old piglet was presented for persistent labor breathing and diagnosed with parasite infections in the lung by analysis of bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) under microscope. By taking advantage of next-generation sequencing approach, we found 9611 homologous tags belonging to 50 annotated genes of tritrichomonads by analysis of mRNA of the bronchoalveolar lavage with the parasite infection. Furthermore, RT-PCR and DNA sequencing analysis confirmed the presence of the tritrichomonad.

Findings: Here, we report a case of pulmonary tritrichomonosis in a pig. By taking advantage of next-generation sequencing approach, we found 9611 homologous tags belonging to 50 annotated genes of tritrichomonads by analysis of mRNA of the bronchoalveolar lavage with the parasite infections. Furthermore, RT-PCR and DNA sequencing analysis confirmed the presence of the tritrichomonad.

Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that tritrichomonads like porcine Tritrichomonas foetus can cause lung infections of pigs and reveal that next-generation sequencing is potential to identify rare diseases like pulmonary tritrichomonosis in clinical.

Keywords: Bronchoalveolar lavage; Next-generation sequencing; Pulmonary infections; Tritrichomonosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval

This study was approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Shanghai Veterinary Research Institute, CAAS.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Morphology of leukocytes and the parasite in the BAL sample of a domestic pig under light microscope. Cells were harvested by bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) from the pig lung, and immediately deposited onto glass slide. Photomicrographs were captured at 20 magnification under light microscope. To note, except the granulocyte, there were the active parasites with flagella (arrow) under microscope
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Analysis of PCR amplification products by 2% agarose gel electrophoresis. Genomic DNAs were extracted from BAL sample with Tritrichomonas spp. Infection and control without parasite infection. Lane 1 to 8 were representative of amplification results of gene Enolase, GAP1, CP8, Actin, β-tubulin, CP2, rRNA, EF-1 alpha from infected sample, respectively; Lane 9–16 were were representative of amplification results of gene Enolase, GAP1, CP8, Actin, β-tubulin, CP2, rRNA, EF-1 alpha from control sample, respectively; Lane M, molecular size standard
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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