Epidemiologic and Molecular Characterization of Zoonotic Dermatophytes from Pet Dogs and Cats in Egypt

Abstract

Dermatophytosis is a zoonotic worldwide public health issue caused by pathogenic fungi called dermatophytes,belonging to three genera; Microsporum (M), Trichophyton (T), and Epidermophyton (E). Such disease is transmitted toman through contact with the infected animals. This study investigated the prevalence of dermatophytes in pet dogsand cats, besides humans in Cairo, Giza, and Beni-Suef governorates, Egypt. Skin scrapings were taken from 245 petdogs, 180 cats, and 60 humans. A direct microscopy, fungal culture, and molecular analysis were carried out. The resultsrevealed that the prevalence of dermatophytes was 20.4, 16.1, and 31.6% in dogs, cats, and humans, respectively. M.canis was the most frequent isolated from dogs (10.2%) followed by T. mentagrophytes (6.1%) and T. verrucosum (4.0%).whereas the unique dermatophyte found in cats was M. canis (8.3%). The study revealed that outdoor housed animalsshowed higher rates of infection than indoor breeds. Concerning age, puppies showed higher susceptibility (50.0%)than juvenile and adult dogs. In relation to, allergic dermatitis, it was found that the diseased dogs and cats showedhigher isolation rates than apparently healthy ones. Shifting to human cutaneous infections, the findings denotedthat M. canis was the highest zoonotic potential (20.0%) whereas T. verrucosum was not determined in the screenedsamples. Furthermore, people aged (11-30) years, as well as pet workers, were the most infected groups. Surprisingly,80.0% of the individuals who suffered from dermal infections and/or alopecia were cult positive for dermatophytes.PCR amplification of dermatophyte using CHS1 primers yielded a fragment of about 440 bp while with ITS1 primeryielded a 700 bp, the isolated M. canis was subjected for sequencing analyses and deposited in the gene bank. It wasconcluded that the occurrence of dermatophytes in dogs and cats along with high the prevalence of M. canis in humanssuggesting the potentiality of zoonotic spread