Tipificación genética y prevalencia de Toxocara catis en muestras fecales de felinos alojados en hogares de la parroquia totoras del cantón Ambato, provincia de Tungurahua

Abstract

The main objective of this research study was to determine through genetic typing, the prevalence of Toxocara catis in domestic cats from the Totoras parish of the canton Ambato in Tungurahua province, during the period April - September 2022, through a direct coproparasitic analysis and the Willis flotation method. For this purpose, 120 samples of fecal feces were collected, which once analyzed resulted in a prevalence of 26.66%, which were classified by sex, and age, with felines between 1 to 3 years of age and males being more infected. Due to its bohemian characteristic activity, the Genetic Typing was carried out using the Polymerase Chain Reaction Technique, at 5% of the positive samples, for which two samples were planted, one of feces that did not detect the presence of the parasite under study and another of egg resuspension in which it was possible to be detected. Therefore, the sample that had to amplify products were sequenced using SANGER and the result obtained was compared with the GenBank database, which yielded 100% identification for this parasite. To corroborate this result, the MEGA 11 application was used, which is responsible for aligning the resulting sequencing together with sequences from the database, to later create a phylogenetic tree that corroborates the genus and species of Toxocara catis. It is recommended to carry out a study at a general level both in cats and their owners to complement the study previously carried out, allowing to confirm or not the relationship between the possession of feline pets and the predisposition to contagion.