Research Article

Serological Detection of Burkhorderia mallei in Equine

Ali Mohammed Obayes*, Zaid Salah Hussein

College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Baghdad, Iraq.

Received | March 24, 2024; Accepted | April 06, 2024; Published | May 15, 2024

*Correspondence | Ali Mohammed Obayes, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Baghdad, Iraq; Email: ali.mohamed71026ali@gmail.com

Citation | Obayes AM, Hussein ZS (2024). Serological detection of burkhorderia mallei in equine. J. Anim. Health Prod. 12(2): 229-232.

DOI | http://dx.doi.org/10.17582/journal.jahp/2024/12.2.229.232

ISSN | 2308-2801

Copyright: 2024 by the authors. Licensee ResearchersLinks Ltd, England, UK.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Introduction

Glanders or farcy is one of the most ancient known diseases of horses. Symptoms in equids were reported by Hippocrates around the year 425 BC. Aristotle described ‘glanders’ around 350 BC and named them ‘malleus’ (Groves and Harrington, 1994; Marr and Malloy, 1996). Burkholderia mallei is the etiologic agent of glanders, an infectious disease of solipeds (horse, mule, and donkey), carnivores including lions, tigers, domestic and feral cats, dogs, and hyenas after eating glanderous meat, also consider an infectious zoonotic disease of humans (Khan et al., 2013). This microorganism is a gram-negative bacillus bacterium causing severe impacts with a low infectious dose transmitted through direct contact with respiratory secretions, animal skin exudates, and fomite (Benanti et al., 2015; Quinn et al., 2015).

Despite the fact that the disease affects primarily Equidae, horses usually exhibit the chronic form of the disease, whereas mules as well as donkeys develop the acute form only and within a few days to weeks the animal is fatal (Theves,1993; Mota et al., 2010). However, carnivores may be infected particularly when they consume meat from infected horses (Alibasoglu et al., 1986). The clinical picture of equine glanders may manifest itself in three forms: pulmonary, nasal, and cutaneous; the course of disease may be acute, subacute, or chronic (Constable et al., 2016). Recording of clinical signs such as fever, inappetence, cough, dyspnea, nasal discharge, development, and location of ulcers, and the pulmonary form is seen almost in all clinical cases; the pulmocutaneous presentation is the most common form of glanders seen in natural disease outbreaks (Jubb et al.,1985). In the cutaneous form characterized by lymphangitis (farcy cords) and lymphadenitis (nodules,ulcers), lesions can occur in any part of the body (Khan et al., 2013).

While the disease is endemic in many countries, continued monitoring of the infection in equines is needed to risk assess the disease for cross-species transmission and its impact on animal health. This study was attempted to assess the potential of the disease in the country to determine seropositive rates in horses and donkeys.

Materials and Methods

During the period, the period extended between April 2022 and May 2023. In this current study, 100 and sixty blood samples were collected randomly from 80 horses housed in the Equestrian Club in Baghdad city which is considered the largest reserve of horses in Iraq (Salah et al., 2016). Samples were also collected from 80 donkeys sacrificed to the predators at the Al-Zawraa Zoo in Baghdad city.

Blood samples were collected directly from the jugular vein using plain vacutainer tubes and serum was extracted, collected blood samples were transported immediately in cooled conditions to clinical pathology lab at the Department of Internal Veterinary Medicine/ Baghdad University to detect the presence of antibodies against Burkholderia mallei in their serum using a commercial cELISA kit (ID Screen® Glanders Double Antigen Multi-species) and the result data were used using the Statistical Analysis System program 9.6th ed. (SAS, 2018).

Results and Discussion

Current results show that 25% (40/160) of the tested animals were seropositive and most of them suffered from several clinical signs, such as nasal discharge, skin lesions, and cough (Figure 1 and Table 1). 22.5% (36/80) of the horses examined were seropositive for Burkholderia mallei, which confirmed many previous findings in Iraq regarding this bacterium as an endemic disease (Al-Ani et al., 1998; Hussein, 2018). Such high infection rates were expected outcomes since the veterinary health authorities in Iraq have stopped culling and destroying infected animals, as well as the inconsiderate importation of horses from neighboring countries without convenient inspection or quarantine, and with the lack or inadequate diagnostic capabilities, most infected horses were treated as ambiguous chronic pneumonia with a wide range of antibiotics that created numerous carrier states. As for the examined donkeys, these animals were of advanced age and suffered from numerous incurable chronic diseases, which is why they are used as a cheap source of meat to feed the predators in Al-Zawraa Zoo These reasons play a role in the spread of the disease, however, despite the study revealed a lower seropositivity for Burkholderia mallei 2.5% (4/80), it is still a potential source for spreading the disease mainly for human in contact because they are a cheap means of transportation and travel long distances, particularly in rural areas and for susceptible predators that were feed on them. in Iraq, donkeys are raised individually and in small numbers and this is probably the reason for the low infection rate that is recorded in this study considering that infected donkeys commonly develop acute lethal forms of the disease (Silva et al., 2013; Sial et al., 2020) 

There was an increased probability that glanders is mainly a disease of horses when found the seropositivity to B.mallei was relatively higher in donkeys (4.1%;8/194) compared to that in horses (2.1%; 4/194) in Pakistan, that is why the current study involved this animal to exhibit the role that may play in the epidemiology of this disease in Iraq. Statistical analysis revealed no significant differences (P <0.05) between the genders of the animals tested (Table 2), which confirms previous results by Hussien (2018) that used the same applied test in the same study area, eliminated gender as a risk factor in Glander disease taking into consideration that a large portion of the sampled animals was aged and suffering from chronic diseases. The current study reveals no association between seropositivity to B.mallei and the age of both studied animals (Table 3) and the result agrees with some previous studies that roll out the age factor (Neubauer et al., 2005; Ghori et al., 2017), however, large-scale survey designed to cover different age is needed to determine which age is at risk infection.

Table 1: Positivity rates of the cELISA in a horse and donkeys samples

Table 2: ELISA results showing effect of gender on the incidence of Glanders

Table 3: The results of the ELISA test show the incidence of glanders in different age groups.

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