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. 2024 Jun:51:101031.
doi: 10.1016/j.vprsr.2024.101031. Epub 2024 May 1.

Apparent absence of Trypanosoma cruzi in Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) from Texas, USA

Ilana A Mosley  1 , Lisa D Auckland  1 , Jessica E Light  2 , Sarah A Hamer  3
Affiliations

Apparent absence of Trypanosoma cruzi in Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) from Texas, USA

Ilana A Mosley et al. Vet Parasitol Reg Stud Reports. 2024 Jun.

Abstract

The Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) is one of the most abundant mammals in North America. Mexican free-tailed bats have a wide geographic range stretching from northern South America to the western United States. Bats are theorized to be the original hosts for Trypanosoma cruzi -the causative agent of Chagas disease- and can serve as a source of infection to triatomine insect vectors that feed upon them. Chagas disease is a neglected tropical disease across the Americas where triatomines are present, including the southern United States, where Texas reports this highest number of locally-acquired human cases. To learn more about the role of bats in the ecology of Chagas disease in Texas, we surveyed a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats from Brazos County, Texas, for T. cruzi using carcasses salvaged after an extreme weather event. A total of 283 Mexican free-tailed bats collected in February 2021 were dissected and DNA from the hearts and kidneys was used for T. cruzi detection via qPCR. None of the bat hearts or kidneys tested positive for T. cruzi; this sample size affords 95% confidence that the true prevalence of T. cruzi in this population does not exceed 1%. Future sampling of multiple bat species as well as migrant and resident colonies of Mexican free-tailed bats across different times of the year over a broader geographic range would be useful in learning more about the role of bats in the ecology of Chagas disease in Texas.

Keywords: Bats; Trypanosoma Cruz; Wildlife surveillance.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests. Ilana Mosley reports financial support was provided by National Institutes of Health. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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