Seroprevalence of Toxoplasmosis among Shelter-Housed Felines in a Philadelphia Suburb

Danni J Mitchell; Chelsea L Reinhard; Stephen D Cole; Darko Stefanovski; Brittany Watson

doi:10.3390/ani12162012

Seroprevalence of Toxoplasmosis among Shelter-Housed Felines in a Philadelphia Suburb

Animals (Basel). 2022 Aug 9;12(16):2012. doi: 10.3390/ani12162012.

Authors

Danni J Mitchell¹, Chelsea L Reinhard¹, Stephen D Cole², Darko Stefanovski³, Brittany Watson¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Clinical Sciences and Advanced Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
² Department of Pathobiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
³ Department of Clinical Studies-New Bolton Center, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19348, USA.

Abstract

Members of the Felidae family are the definitive host of the ubiquitous zoonotic parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Few studies have been conducted to determine the epidemiology of T. gondii 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 T. gondii, 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.

Keywords: prevalence; seroepidemiologic studies; shelter-housed cats; toxoplasma; zoonoses.

Grants and funding

This project was funded through the Penn Vet Rosenthal Shelter Medicine Student Research Fellowship program. Salary for Reinhard’s position is supported by the Bernice Barbour Foundation.