Seroprevalence of Toxoplasmosis among Shelter-Housed Felines in a Philadelphia Suburb
2022
Danni J. Mitchell | Chelsea L. Reinhard | Stephen D. Cole | Darko Stefanovski | Brittany Watson
Members of the Felidae family are the definitive host of the ubiquitous zoonotic parasite <i>Toxoplasma gondii</i>. Few studies have been conducted to determine the epidemiology of <i>T. gondii</i> in domestic felines within animal shelter populations. The goal of this study was to assess seroprevalence in a limited-admission shelter in the greater Philadelphia area. Serum samples were collected from cats at a shelter in Media, Pennsylvania during the summer of 2018 to assess the proportion of the population that was IgM or IgG seropositive for antibodies against <i>T. gondii</i>, using a commercially available ELISA. Out of the 84 cats that were sampled, 24 cats were seropositive, giving a population prevalence of 28.6%. Nine cats were seropositive for IgM, nine were seropositive for IgG, and six were seropositive for both IgM and IgG. Based on our data, we found that a large percentage of this population was seronegative. Although the sample size in this study was limited and prevented us from obtaining statistically significant results, this research can serve as a pilot study for further investigations into the seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis among shelter-housed felines.
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