CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Leptospirosis is a disease caused by pathogenic spirochetes of the genus Leptospira,transmitted by wild and domestic animals. To know the variables related to the eventualacquisition of infection in animals have great importance for the design of sanitarypolicies. Our objective was to assess the prevalence of antibodies anti-leptospira andthe presence of leptospiras spp. in Caiman latirostris in captivity and in the wild, in thenorth of Santa Fe province. Blood samples were taken from 45 individuals (20 wildanimals and 25 in captivity). Before the extraction, we cleaned the neck of caimans, inorder to prevent samples contamination. Anticoagulant blood with heparin was cultivated in two specials media, EMJH and Fletcher. From serum, the presence ofantibodies was determined by microscopic agglutination test (MAT) and polymerasechain reaction (PCR) to detect DNA of the bacteria. In addition we determined pH ofthe urine in captivity animals. pH was 8 (slightly alkaline pH). We excluded 9 of the 45samples analyzed by MAT, because 5 had lipemic serum and 4 were contaminated. In15 of 19 captivity samples and 11 of 17 wild samples, anti-leptospira antibodies weredetected by MAT. In 69.2% (18 of 26) of these samples the presumably infectingserogroup was Pyrogenes, presenting coagglutinations with Icterohaemorrhagiae(23.1%) and with Icterohaemorrhagiae and Grippothyphosa (3.8%). Other serogroupsdetected were: Canicola, Autumnalis, Copenhageni, Grippothyphosa, Tarassovi, Wolffiand Javanica. On the samples analyzed by PCR, one of a captivity animal was positive;from this sample we could not isolate leptospires because of agar contamination. Bloodagar media were negative, but 17.8% (8 of 45) of them were contaminated. This workallows to determine the presence of Leptospira spp. in one caiman, and the highprevalence of antibodies, both in captivity and nature. In this way, it concludes thatcaiman are in frequent contact with the bacteria at some point in their lives, and thatthey could present an acute infection without any obvious symptoms. According to thepH obtained, to the seroprevalence found and that the caimans spend time taking in themargins of the bodies of water, where the water is very shallow and the temperature ishigh, there would be adequate conditions for the transmission of this disease in thestudied area and in places where this species frequently lives.