title: Multimammate rat (Mastomys natalensis), Tristram's jird (Meriones tristrami) and Wagner's gerbil (Gerbillus dasyurus) as laboratory models of acute neosporosis.
abstract: To test the different sensitivity of rodents of the subfamily Murinae and Gerbillinae, Wagner's gerbils (Gerbillus dasyurus), Tristram's jirds (Meriones tristrami) and multimammate rats (Mastomys natalensis) were inoculated with Neospora caninum tachyzoites. Clinical signs of neosporosis appeared in all inoculated animals. Histopathological examination confirmed the presence of tachyzoites in brains, lungs, skeletal muscle, myocardium, liver, in serosa of stomach and intestines, and in vesicular accessory genital glands. An examination of brains by PCR revealed presence of N. caninum DNA in all experimentally N. caninum infected rodents. The susceptibility of Wagner's gerbils and Tristram's jirds further proved the high sensitivity of gerbiline rodents to the N. caninum infection. The finding of N. caninum tachyzoites in the vesicular accessory genital glands of the infected gerbils suggests the usefulness of the rodent model for demonstration of N. caninum in the male reproductive system. Moreover, the multimammate rat was a susceptible experimental host to be the first immunocompetent rodent of the subfamily Murinae.
authors.affiliation: Clinic of Ruminants Diseases, University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Palackého 1-3, 612 42 Brno, Czech Republic. hofmannoval@vfu.cz
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hůrková-Hofmannová
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Václavek
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Skoric
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Fictum
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Modrý
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000818:Animals; D003048:Coccidiosis / Q000469:parasitology*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004198:Disease Susceptibility; D005260:Female; D005849:Gerbillinae / Q000469:parasitology*; D008297:Male; D051189:Murinae / Q000469:parasitology*; D018688:Neospora