Seroprevalence of Dirofilaria immitis in Cats from Liaoning Province, Northeastern China

Hou, Honglie; Cao, Lili; Ren, Wenzhi; Wang, Dansheng; Ding, He; You, Juan; Yao, Xinhua; Dong, Hang; Guo, Yanbing; Yuan, Shuxian; Zhang, Xichen; Gong, Pengtao

There are many surveys about the prevalence of D. immitis in dogs, but only few reports about the prevalence of D. immitis in cats in China and neighboring countries. The prevalence of D. immitis in stray and pet cats was 3.0% (11/362) in Gansu province, northwestern China [21] , and 1.9% (22/1,141) in Stray cats in Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Shandong province, eastern China [22] . The only report about the seroprevalence of D. immitis is 4.6% (34/746) in pet cats in Bangkok and vicinities, Thailand [31] . A survey of D. immitis infection among stray cats in Korea using nested PCR showed that 6.0% (14/235) were positive for D. immitis [10] , and 2.6% (4/145) among stray cats in Gyunggi province in South Korea [27] . In Japan, a prevalence of D. immitis varying from 0.5 to 9.5% for stray cats and from 3.0 to 5.2% for house cats that has been examined since 1957 to 1998 [32] . However, no D. immitis was detected from 170 blood samples of domestic and stray cats in Malaysia [9] . There are increasing numbers of cats in China in the last 3 decades along with raising public health problems in view of cats can transmit a number of zoonotic pathogens, Epidemiological data of D. immitis is necessary to control and prevent feline dirofilariosis.