AbstractTicks and tick-borne diseases cause 787.63 million USD economic losses in India. Anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and theileriosis were listed among the top ten livestock diseases in India. The present study aimed to detect different Anaplasma spp. in cattle, sheep, and goats by using species-specific PCR in Tamil Nadu, India. Blood samples from a total of 274 animals were collected from cattle, sheep, and goats. DNA was extracted from whole blood samples by the NaOH lysis method and screened with species-specific msp5 primers for A. marginale and groEL primers for A. bovis and A. ovis. For each species, one sample was randomly taken for sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis was carried out. The overall prevalence of A. marginale, A. bovis, and A. ovis was 33.94%, 9.12%, and 12.77%, respectively, in Tamil Nadu. Cattle were predominantly infected with A. marginale (50.31%), and A. ovis infection was most commonly seen in sheep (28.57%) and goats (34.55%) compared to A. bovis. Ingeneral, goats were more commonly infected with Anaplasma spp. than sheep. Phylogenetic and BLAST analysis of A.marginale msp5, A. bovis groEL,and A. ovis groELgene sequences revealed that they were 98.55% to 100%, 88.14% to97.65%, and 97.78% to 100%, respectively, matched with nucleotide sequences from different geographical locations, hosts, and vectors deposited in the NCBI GenBank database. This study provided salient information on the epidemiology of different Anaplasma spp. and also revealed an increased prevalence of A. marginale in cattle and A. ovis in sheep and goats in Tamil Nadu, India.
Murugesan et al. (Wed,) studied this question.