Abstract
Blastocystis sp. is a common protist that colonizes the intestinal tract in both humans and animals worldwide. A total of 666 fecal samples of Rex rabbits were collected from 12 farms in three administrative regions in Henan, China. Blastocystis sp. was screened and subtyped by PCR amplification of the small subunit ribosomal DNA. The results indicated that 31 (4.7%, 31/666) rabbits were positive for Blastocystis sp. across three farms (25.0%, 3/12). The infection rate of Blastocystis sp. in Rex rabbits was highest in Jiyuan at 9.1% (30/331), followed by Luoyang (0.5%, 1/191), with no positive infections found in Zhengzhou. The Blastocystis sp. infection rate in adults (10.2%, 14/287) was higher than that in young rabbits (4.5%, 17/379) (χ2 = 0.0027, P > 0.50). Four Blastocystis sp. subtypes (ST1, ST3, ST4, and ST17) were identified in rabbits in the present study. Among them, the subtypes ST1 (n = 15) and ST3 (n = 14) were dominant, followed by ST4 (n = 1) and ST17 (n = 1). Blastocystis sp. ST1 was the dominant subtype in adult rabbits, and ST3 was the dominant subtype in young rabbits. This study enriches the data on the prevalence and subtype distributions of Blastocystis sp. in rabbits. More studies are needed among humans, domestic animals, and wild animals to obtain a better understanding of their role in the spread of Blastocystis sp.
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Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article. The newly generated sequences were deposited in the GenBank database under the accession numbers OP866799-OP866808.
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We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.
Funding
This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32102698), the Henan Postdoctoral Scientific Research Initiation Project (282851), and the Outstanding Young Talents of Henan Agricultural University (30501055).
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Junqiang Li contributed to the study conception and design. Miaomiao Zhang and Junchen Zhang prepared the material and performed the experiment. Miaomiao Zhang, Junchen Zhang, Jingjing Sun, Shuying Zhu, Huiyan Xu, Xiaoying Li, and Longxian Zhang contributed to the data analysis. Junqiang Li and Miaomiao Zhang wrote and revised the draft of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Zhang, M., Zhang, J., Sun, J. et al. First identification of Blastocystis sp. subtypes in Rex rabbits in China. Parasitol Res 122, 1079–1086 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-023-07807-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-023-07807-5