Lack of evidence of paratuberculosis in wild canids from southwestern Europe

• Published in: European Journal of Wildlife Research
• Main Authors: Sobrino, Raquel, Aurtenetxe, Olaia, Carta, Tania, Mamián Ruiz, Lida Waldina, Gerrikagoitia, Xeider, Balseiro, Ana, Oleaga, Álvaro, Sevilla, Iker A., Barral, Marta, Garrido, Joseba M., Gortázar, Christian
• Other Authors: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España), European Commission, Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Medio Rural y Marino (España), Principado de Asturias, Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha, European Research Council
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Nature 2011
• Subjects: Canis lupus
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/282937; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-010-0490-x; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000781; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011698; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004837; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100014211; https://doi.org/10.13039/100011941; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000780

This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. Wild carnivores are at the top of the trophic chain. They are predators and carrion consumers, and thus, prone to come in contact with disease agents contaminating the environment or infecting live or dead animals. We hypothesized that wild canids could be used as sentinels for the detection of regions with higher Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis (MAP) prevalence in wild and domestic animals. To test this hypothesis, we set up an ELISA to test 262 wolf (Canis lupus) and fox (Vulpes vulpes) sera for MAP-specific antibodies and processed a subset of samples for culture (n = 61), MAP-specific PCR (15) and histopathology (14). In wolves, the optical density (OD) values in the ELISA were continuously distributed. Ten fox sera (4%) had OD readings of over twice the mean, suggesting contact with mycobacteria. However, all samples tested by PCR were negative for both IS900 and ISMAP02 sequences, and samples cultured for MAP yielded no growth. No visible paratuberculosis or tuberculosis-compatible lesions were recorded. On histopathological examination, no lesions compatible with mycobacterial diseases were observed. These results suggest that wild canids show little or no evidence of paratuberculosis and are unlikely to be useful sentinels for the detection of MAP in Southwestern Europe. This study is a contribution to grant AGL2008-03875 Plan Nacional MCINN and FEDER, European Research Project 212414 “Strategies for the Eradication of Bovine Tuberculosis, Tb-Step”, and the agreements with Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Medio Rural y Marino, Principado de Asturias, and Castilla–La Mancha. R. Sobrino had a grant from Castilla–La Mancha. Peer reviewed