Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Jun 3:27:e00166.
doi: 10.1016/j.fawpar.2022.e00166. eCollection 2022 Jun.

Molecular detection of Toxoplasma gondii in chicken hearts from markets and retail stores in Northern Iran

Somayeh Abbaszadeh  1 , Aref Teimouri  2 , Mohammad Reza Mahmoudi  1 , Zahra Atrkar Roushan  3 , Nayereh Hajipour  4 , Bijan Majidi-Shad  1 , Meysam Sharifdini  1
Affiliations

Molecular detection of Toxoplasma gondii in chicken hearts from markets and retail stores in Northern Iran

Somayeh Abbaszadeh et al. Food Waterborne Parasitol. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Detection of Toxoplasma gondii in chicken products indicates risk of transmission to consumers. The objective of the current study was to investigate the molecular prevalence of T. gondii in free-ranging and industrial chickens in Guilan province, Northern Iran. A total of 150 chicken heart samples including 75 free-range and 75 industrial chickens were collected from farmers' markets and chicken retailers in Guilan, Northern Iran, between October 2017 and August 2018. Genomic DNA were extracted from samples and examined for evidence of T. gondii using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) targeting the B1 gene. The B1-positive samples were further analyzed by nested-PCR for SAG1 gene. Of the 150 samples, T. gondii DNA fragments were detected in 59 (39.3%), including 30 (40%) free-range and 29 (38.7%) industrial chicken. No significant differences of T. gondii DNA detection was observed between the free-range and industrial chicken samples (p = 0.73). Four selected positive samples were used for amplifying and sequencing of the SAG1 gene. The results revealed that all four sequences of SAG1 had 100% similarity with T. gondii sequences previously isolated from an AIDS/HIV patient in Mazandaran province, Northern Iran. Furthermore, the phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that all four sequences were closely related to Type I of T. gondii. However, our Type I identification is preliminary and needs to be confirmed by further multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis. The findings of the present study provide new data about the presence of T. gondii DNA in chicken hearts in the study area. These results confirm that chicken can be used as sentinels for environment contamination; however, further studies are needed to determine the viability of T. gondii in chicken hearts from Iran for risk assessment.

Keywords: B1 gene; Chickens; Northern Iran; SAG1; Toxoplasma gondii.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that we do not have any conflict of interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Phylogenetic tree obtained via the Maximum Likelihood (ML) method and the Hasegawa-Kishino-Yano model based on the SAG1 gene (The black circle indicates the sequence derived from this study). The numbers above branches correspond to bootstrap values based on 1000 replicates. Neospora caninum served as an outgroup. Scale bar represented 0.05 changes per nucleotide.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Asgari Q., Akrami Mohajeri F., Kalantari M., Esmaeilzadeh B., Farzaneh A., Moazeni M. Chicken toxoplasmosis in different types of breeding: a seroprevalence survey in southern Iran. Int. J. Poult. Sci. 2008;7(12):1247–1250.
    1. Cook A.J., Gilbert R.E., Buffolano W., Zufferey J., Petersen E., Jenum P.A., Foulon W., Semprini A.E., Dunn D.T. Sources of Toxoplasma infection in pregnant women: European multicentre case-control study. European research network on congenital toxoplasmosis. BMJ. 2000;321:142–147. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Dubey J.P. 2nd ed. CRC Press LLC; Boca Raton, FL: 2010. Toxoplasmosis of Animals and Humans.
    1. Dubey J.P. Toxoplasma gondii infections in chickens (Gallus domesticus): prevalence, clinical disease, diagnosis and public health significance. Zoonoses Public Health. 2010;57:60–73. - PubMed
    1. Dubey J.P., Graham D.H., Blackston C.R., Lehmann T., Gennari S.M., et al. Biological and genetic characterisation of Toxoplasma gondii isolates from chickens (Gallus domesticus) from Sa~o Paulo, Brazil: unexpected findings. Int. J. Parasitol. 2002;32:99–105. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources