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Genetic diversity of wild rodents and detection of Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Q fever, in Saudi Arabia

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Abstract

Throughout history, wildlife has been regarded as a major source of infectious diseases. Rodentia, the most speciose order of mammals, whose members are recognised hosts of more than 60 zoonotic diseases, represent a potential threat to human health. Recently, epidemiological data from Saudi Arabia indicated an actual growth in the number of emerging and/or re-emerging cases of several zoonoses. However, there is a lack of studies focusing on the molecular taxonomy of rodents and the pathogens they may harbour in this region. In this study, the first molecular characterisation of six rodent taxa in this region is provided, based on partial Cyt B and 16S genes. The data confirm the spread of rodent-associated C. burnetii strains in Jazan, southwestern Saudi Arabia. The PCR targeting IS111, the multi-copy transposase gene, revealed 17.5% (36/205) positive samples, whereas the second nested PCR, targeting the single-copy Com1 gene, revealed 16.6% (34/205) positive samples. Phylogenetic and network analyses indicated the presence of four haplotypes of C. burnetii within the studied localities. One major haplotype (H-2) was observed in all rodent species and from 18 localities. The infection rates of C. burnetii among studied species, localities and habitats were not significantly different (>0.05). Our results facilitate the assessment of the health risk associated with rodents and the development of strategies to control the increasing impacts of Q fever.

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Code or data availability

All sequences generated during the current study are available in Genbank under the accession numbers OK033234-51.

Funding

The project was financially supported by Researchers Supporting Project number (RSP-2021/94) King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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Author notes

  1. Bandar H Alotaibi and Nabil Amor contributed equally to the work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, King Saud University, Riyadh, 11451, Saudi Arabia

    Bandar H Alotaibi, Nabil Amor, Osama B. Mohammed & Abdulaziz N Alagaili

  2. Laboratory of Biodiversity, Parasitolgy and Ecology of Aquatic Ecosystems, Department of Biology - Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia

    Nabil Amor

  3. Parassitologia e Malattie Parassitarie, Dipartimento di Medicina Veterinaria, Università di Sassari, Via Vienna 2, 07100, Sassari, Italy

    Paolo Merella

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  1. Bandar H Alotaibi
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  5. Abdulaziz N Alagaili
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design.

Nabil Amor: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Resources, Formal analysis, Writing - Original Draft, Supervision, Validation, Funding acquisition

Bandar H Alotaibi: Resources, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis

Paolo Merella: Writing - Review & Editing

Osama B Mohammed: Conceptualization, Review

Abdulaziz N Alagaili: Conceptualization, Supervision

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nabil Amor.

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Declaration of conflict of interest

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Ethics approval

The Research Ethics Committee (REC) at the King Saud University has APPROVED this project referred to Ethics Reference No: KSU-SE-21-07 (attached file). This approval is based on the recommendation of the Research Ethics Sub-Committee (meeting minute no. 5th and date 28/01/2021) and on an appropriate risk/benefit ratio, and a study design wherein the risks have been minimized.

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The original version of this article was revised: In the published article, the order of author's name is given incorrectly. The authors apologize for any inconvenience that it may have caused. The correct Authors list should be : · Bandar H Alotaibi1, Nabil Amor1,2 · Paolo Merella3 · Osama B. Mohammed1 · Abdulaziz N Alagaili1 and the article should be cited as “Alotaibi BH, Amor N, Merella P, Mohammed OB, Alagaili AN.

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Alotaibi, B.H., Amor, N., Merella, P. et al. Genetic diversity of wild rodents and detection of Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Q fever, in Saudi Arabia. Vet Res Commun 46, 769–780 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11259-022-09897-5

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