Parasitology

Biography

Biography: Ronel Pienaar

Abstract

The potential impact of co-infection on disease dynamics of Piroplasmida is becoming more recognised. The co-infection dynamics of Babesia and Theileria species of cattle, dogs and various wildlife species are widely documented and increasingly studied. In a conservation conscious era the focus on the risk at the game-livestock interfaces and trans-boundary parks also fuels the study of reservoir disease hosts and accurate diagnosis of disease. Buffalo are notoriously known to harbour and act as a source of infection to vectors and other animals of especially FMD, bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis. They also harbour a number of Theileria parasites. To this extend we examined the piroplasm burden of ~2500 blood samples of buffalo and other game species across three National parks in South Africa and National parks from Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia to determine the extent of infection, diversity and parasitaemia ranges of parasites using real-time PCR technology. We identified two main genotypes that interfered with accurate molecular diagnosis of Theileria parva, the causative agent of East coast fever and Corridor disease in cattle, and calculated their parasitaemia ranges. Resulting data supported a hypothesis that similar parasitaemia ranges exist for different Theileria species that holds implications for accurate diagnosis in the case of mixed infections. The vector ticks for many of these piroplasms are still unknown.