Prevalence of Bordetella bronchiseptica, Mycoplasma felis, and Chlamydia felis using a newly developed triplex real-time polymerase chain reaction assay in Korean cat population

초록

Bordetella (B .) bronchiseptica , Mycoplasma (M .) felis , and Chlamydia (C .) felis are considered as main bacterial pathogens of feline upper respiratory tract disease (URTD). In this study, a new triplex quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (tqPCR) assay was developed for the rapid and dif-ferential detection of these bacteria in a single reaction. The assay specifically amplified three bacte-rial genes with the detection limit of below 10 copies/reaction. The assay showed high repeatability and reproducibility, with coefficients of intra-assay and inter-assay variation of less than 1%. Based on the diagnostic results of the assay using 94 clinical samples obtained from cats with URTD signs, prevalence of B. bronchiseptica , M. felis , or C. felis was 10.6%, 36.2%, or 6.4%, respectively, indicat-ing that the diagnostic sensitivity was comparable to those of previously reported monoplex qPCR assays. The dual infection rates for B. bronchiseptica and M. felis or M. felis and C. felis was 2.1% or 3.2%, respectively. These results indicated that M. felis has been widely spread, and its co-infection with B. bronchiseptica or M. felis has been frequently occurred in Korean cat population. The devel-oped tqPCR assay will serve as a promising tool for etiological and epidemiological studies of these three bacterial pathogens and the prevalence data obtained in this study will contribute to expanding knowledge about the epidemiology of feline URTD in Korea.

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