Thomasson, D, Wright, EA, Hughes, JM, Dodd, NS, Cox, AP, Boyce, K, Gerwash, O, Abushahma, M, Lun, ZR, Murphy, RG, Rogan, MT 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5399-8570 and Hide, G ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3608-0175
2011,
'Prevalence and co-infection of Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum in Apodemus sylvaticus in an area relatively free of cats'
, Parasitology, 138 (09)
, pp. 1117-1123.
Abstract
The protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii is prevalent worldwide and can infect a remarkably wide range of hosts despite
felids being the only definitive host. As cats play a major role in transmission to secondary mammalian hosts, the interaction
between cats and these hosts should be a major factor determining final prevalence in the secondary host. This study
investigates the prevalence of T. gondii in a natural population of Apodemus sylvaticus collected from an area with low cat
density (<2·5 cats/km2). A surprisingly high prevalence of 40·78% (95% CI: 34·07%–47·79%) was observed despite this.
A comparable level of prevalence was observed in a previously published study using the same approaches where a
prevalence of 59% (95% CI: 50·13%–67·87%) was observed in a natural population of Mus domesticus from an area with high
cat density (>500 cats/km2). Detection of infected foetuses frompregnant dams in both populations suggests that congenital
transmission may enable persistence of infection in the absence of cats. The prevalences of the related parasite, Neospora
caninum were found to be low in both populations (A. sylvaticus: 3·39% (95% CI: 0·12%–6·66%); M. domesticus: 3·08%
(95% CI: 0·11%–6·05%)). These results suggest that cat density may have a lower than expected effect on final prevalence in
these ecosystems.
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