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. 2021 May 24;6(2):85.
doi: 10.3390/tropicalmed6020085.

Exposure and Carriage of Pathogenic Leptospira in Livestock in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Hannah M Cranford  1 , Marissa Taylor  1 , Andrew Springer Browne  1   2 , David P Alt  3   4 , Tammy Anderson  3   5 , Camila Hamond  3   5 , Richard L Hornsby  3   4 , Karen LeCount  3   5 , Linda Schlater  3   5 , Tod Stuber  3   5 , Leah De Wilde  1 , Valicia J Burke-France  1 , Esther M Ellis  1 , Jarlath E Nally  3   4 , Bethany Bradford  6
Affiliations

Exposure and Carriage of Pathogenic Leptospira in Livestock in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Hannah M Cranford et al. Trop Med Infect Dis. .

Abstract

From 2019-2020, the Virgin Islands Department of Health (VIDOH) investigated potential animal reservoirs of Leptospira spp., the pathogenic bacteria that cause leptospirosis. We examined Leptospira exposure and carriage in livestock on the island of St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands (USVI). We utilized the microscopic agglutination test (MAT) to evaluate the sera, and the fluorescent antibody test (FAT), real time polymerase chain reaction (rt-PCR), and bacterial culture to evaluate urine specimens from livestock (n = 126): 28 cattle, 19 goats, 46 pigs, and 33 sheep. Seropositivity was 37.6% (47/125) with agglutinating antibodies to the following serogroups identified: Australis, Djasiman, Icterohaemorrhagiae, Ballum, Sejroe, Cynopteri, Autumnalis, Hebdomadis, Pomona, Canicola, Grippotyphosa, and Pyrogenes. Urine from 4 animals (4.0%, 4/101) was positive by rt-PCR for lipL32: 2 sheep, 1 goat, and 1 bull. Sequencing of secY amplicons identified L. interrogans in 1 sheep and 1 bull. Livestock in USVI harbor pathogenic Leptospira bacteria and could play a role in the zoonotic cycle of leptospirosis.

Keywords: bacterial disease; leptospirosis; livestock; zoonoses.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Phylogeny of Leptospira spp. based on secY gene sequence analysis. Neighbor-Joining method. The evolutionary distances were computed using the Tamura-Nei method. St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands clinical samples (LL23; LL53) are in blue.
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