Ocorrência de anticorpos contra Toxoplasma gondii e fatores determinantes da infecção canina em Ilhéus-Itabuna, BA

Abstract

Toxoplasma gondii is an obrigatory intracelular parasite that has the felids as definitive host (DH) and the homoeothermic animals as intermediary hosts (IH). The infection occurs by ingesting sporulated oocysts that were eliminated in DH feces, by bradyzoites when ingested by IH meat or by tachyzoites when occur vertical transmission. In this study, 529 canine blood samples were collected, 120 at the municipality of Itabuna, and 409 at the municipality of Ilhéus. All blood samples of Itabuna were consisted of animals from domiciled urban areas. From Ilhéus, 96 were domiciled from urban areas, 135 were urban but strayed dogs from Centre for Zoonosis Control (CZC) and 178 were domiciled and from rural area. The Indirect hemagglutination test was used to test the presence of anti-T. gondii and a questionnaire were applied to the domiciled dog owners to analyze risk factors associated to the infection. From all 529 dogs, 193 were positive (36.5%). At Ilhéus 37.7% (154/255) and at Itabuna 32.5% (39/81) of animals were positive. The risk factors associated to the infection were localization, rural dogs had higher chance than urban (p=0.001), the behavior, the strayed urban dogs had more chance than the urban domiciled dogs (p=0.01), home-made food and meat ingestion (p= 0.034 and 0.027 respectively), race, the undefined race dogs had more risk (p=0.0001) and age, were the animals under five years old had a higher risk to the infection (p=0.009). The presence of veterinary assistance was considered as a protection factor. The logistic regression confirmed the habitat and age of the animals as the main risk factor associsted with the infection.