PreprintCommunicationVersion 1Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
“One Health” Goal: Novel Preliminary Study on Putative Pig Immuno-Genetic Resistance to Toxoplasma gondii and Serological Survey in Central Italy Regions
Version 1
: Received: 13 February 2024 / Approved: 14 February 2024 / Online: 14 February 2024 (05:35:06 CET)
How to cite:
Torricelli, M.; Fratto, A.; Costarelli, S.; Lancioni, H.; Torina, A.; Panzieri, C.; Sebastiani, C.; Ciullo, M.; Cruciani, D.; Crotti, S.; Mazzone, P.; Biagetti, M. “One Health” Goal: Novel Preliminary Study on Putative Pig Immuno-Genetic Resistance to Toxoplasma gondii and Serological Survey in Central Italy Regions. Preprints2024, 2024020777. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.0777.v1
Torricelli, M.; Fratto, A.; Costarelli, S.; Lancioni, H.; Torina, A.; Panzieri, C.; Sebastiani, C.; Ciullo, M.; Cruciani, D.; Crotti, S.; Mazzone, P.; Biagetti, M. “One Health” Goal: Novel Preliminary Study on Putative Pig Immuno-Genetic Resistance to Toxoplasma gondii and Serological Survey in Central Italy Regions. Preprints 2024, 2024020777. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.0777.v1
Torricelli, M.; Fratto, A.; Costarelli, S.; Lancioni, H.; Torina, A.; Panzieri, C.; Sebastiani, C.; Ciullo, M.; Cruciani, D.; Crotti, S.; Mazzone, P.; Biagetti, M. “One Health” Goal: Novel Preliminary Study on Putative Pig Immuno-Genetic Resistance to Toxoplasma gondii and Serological Survey in Central Italy Regions. Preprints2024, 2024020777. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.0777.v1
APA Style
Torricelli, M., Fratto, A., Costarelli, S., Lancioni, H., Torina, A., Panzieri, C., Sebastiani, C., Ciullo, M., Cruciani, D., Crotti, S., Mazzone, P., & Biagetti, M. (2024). “One Health” Goal: Novel Preliminary Study on Putative Pig Immuno-Genetic Resistance to <em>Toxoplasma gondii</em> and Serological Survey in Central Italy Regions. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.0777.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Torricelli, M., Piera Mazzone and Massimo Biagetti. 2024 "“One Health” Goal: Novel Preliminary Study on Putative Pig Immuno-Genetic Resistance to <em>Toxoplasma gondii</em> and Serological Survey in Central Italy Regions" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202402.0777.v1
Abstract
Toxoplasmosis is a zoonosis of warm-blooded animals, affecting also humans, caused by Toxo-plasma gondii, an obligate intracellular parasite with a complex biological cycle. Toxoplasmosis is considered a re-emerging zoonosis and an important public health threat, also for the absence, up to now, of efficient vaccines and preventive measures. Sources of transmission to humans are environmental or food-borne, mainly through the consumption of raw and undercooked meat, predominantly of Sus scrofa, considered highly susceptible to T. gondii. Mainly in the last dec-ades, an effective strategy to counter animal infectious diseases was based on the discovery of resistance immuno-genetic markers, possibly to be used for association studies between geno-typic and phenotypic traits and consequently in Marker Assisted Selection. Until now, this gen-otyping approach has never been adopted for T. gondii infection, so this study aimed, for the first time, to fill this gap. In particular, pigs, reared in different farms of Central Italy, were serologically characterized by an ELISA assay performed on diaphragm meat juice. Out of 179 tested animals, 98 resulted seropositive (54.74%), 57 seronegative (31.84%) and 24 doubtful (10.6%), underlining a possible re-emerging diffusion of this protozoan in the investigated areas. Atten-tion was firstly focused on IL-18 gene, encoding for a pro-inflammatory cytokine that plays a key role starting from the upstream steps of the immunity pathway towards T. gondii. A RT-PCR assay followed by Sanger sequencing of IL-18 cDNA was de novo developed. For this interleukin, at this stage, genetic analysis has not highlighted significant polymorphic variations compared to the reference sequence, except for a seropositive animal. However, the outcomes of this pre-liminary innovative study will be investigated in depth analyzing other relevant genetic re-gions and other target genes.
Keywords
Toxoplasma gondii; pig genetic resistance; interleukin-18 gene; immunity pathway; serological sur-vey; pork meat safety; alternative prevention measures; novel investigation; One Health
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Animal Science, Veterinary Science and Zoology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.