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. 2021 Nov 20;9(11):2394.
doi: 10.3390/microorganisms9112394.

Cross-Border Investigations on the Prevalence and Transmission Dynamics of Cryptosporidium Species in Dairy Cattle Farms in Western Mainland Europe

Pedro Pinto  1 , Cláudia A Ribeiro  1 , Sumaiya Hoque  1 , Ourida Hammouma  2 , Hélène Leruste  3 , Sébastien Détriché  4 , Evi Canniere  5 , Yvonne Daandels  6 , Martine Dellevoet  6 , Janine Roemen  6 , Anne Barbier Bourgeois  7 , Martin Kváč  8   9 , Jérôme Follet  10 , Anastasios D Tsaousis  1
Affiliations

Cross-Border Investigations on the Prevalence and Transmission Dynamics of Cryptosporidium Species in Dairy Cattle Farms in Western Mainland Europe

Pedro Pinto et al. Microorganisms. .

Abstract

Cryptosporidium is an apicomplexan parasitic protist, which infects a wide range of hosts, causing cryptosporidiosis disease. In farms, the incidence of this disease is high in animals such as cows, leading to extensive economic loss in the livestock industry. Infected cows may also act as a major reservoir of Cryptosporidium spp., in particular C. parvum, the most common cause of cryptosporidiosis in these animals. This poses a risk to the trading of livestock, to other farms via breeding centres, and to human health. This study is a part of a global project aimed at strategies to tackle cryptosporidiosis. To reach this target, it was essential to determine whether prevalence was dependent on the studied countries or if the issue was borderless. Indeed, C. parvum occurrence was assessed across dairy farms in certain regions of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. At the same time, the animal-to-animal transmission of the circulating C. parvum subtypes was studied. To accomplish this, we analysed 1084 faecal samples, corresponding to 57 dairy farms from all three countries. To this end, 18S rRNA and gp60 genes fragments were amplified, followed by DNA sequencing, which was subsequently used for detection and subtyping C. parvum. Bioinformatic and phylogenetic methods were integrated to analyse and characterise the obtained DNA sequences. Our results show 25.7%, 24.9% and 20.8% prevalence of Cryptosporidium spp. in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands respectively. Overall, 93% of the farms were Cryptosporidium positive. The gp60 subtyping demonstrated a significant number of the C. parvum positives belonged to the IIa allelic family, which has been also identified in humans. Therefore, this study highlights how prevalent C. parvum is in dairy farms and further suggests cattle as a possible carrier of zoonotic C. parvum subtypes, which could pose a threat to human health.

Keywords: 18S rRNA; Cryptosporidium; dairy cattle; genotyping; gp60; prevalence.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Geographical map of Belgium, France and the Netherlands indicating farms negative for Cryptosporidium spp. (grey circles) and farms positive for C. parvum (black circles), C. bovis (grey diamonds), and C. andersoni (black square). Distribution of C. parvum isolates with gp60 subtypes are represented as numbers.
Figure 2
Figure 2
A maximum likelihood (ML) tree based on the 18S rRNA gene sequences of C. bovis, C. ryanae, C. xioai and C. andersoni obtained in this study. Bootstrap values for the nodes with more than 50% support are shown. Sequences from this study are identified by country (NL for the Netherlands and highlighted in blue; BE for Belgium and highlighted in red; FR for France and highlighted in green), number of the farm (e.g., NL4), and host age (CA for calf and CO for cow). The ML tree was rooted with an 18S rRNA sequence from Monocystis agilis (accession number: AF457127). The GenBank accession number for each sequence is mentioned in parenthesis.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Venn diagram with all observed C. parvum gp60 subtypes across Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.
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