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Muscular sarcocystosis in wild carnivores in Honshu, Japan

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Abstract

A total of 65 free-living carnivores collected on Honshu Island, Japan were examined for muscular Sarcocystis species infections. Among them, 12 Japanese raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus), one Japanese red fox (Vulpes vulpes japonica), three Japanese martens (Martes melampus melampus), and two Japanese badgers (Meles meles anakuma) were found to have sarcocysts in their muscles. No inflammatory reactions associated with sarcocysts were observed. Ultrastructurally, the sarcocysts detected in the Japanese raccoon dogs, Japanese red fox, and Japanese martens were similar to each other, with the sarcocyst wall being thin and exhibiting minute undulations. On the other hand, the sarcocysts detected in the Japanese badgers had a thick cyst wall with numerous finger-like protrusions which contained microtubules. The species of Sarcocystis in Japanese carnivores remain to be determined. This is the first published report on muscular sarcocystosis in Japanese carnivores.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Ms. Cate Swift for her conscientious proofreading. We would also like to thank Dr. Toshio Mizoguchi and Dr. Akio Inagaki at the Fukushima Wildlife Rehabilitation Center for providing the carcasses of wild carnivores. This study was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid (H19-Emerging-General-009) for scientific research from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Veterinary Pathology, Department of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Applied Biological Sciences, Gifu University, 1-1 Yanagido, Gifu, 501-1193, Japan

    Masahito Kubo, Hiroki Sakai & Tokuma Yanai

  2. Research Center for Wildlife Management, Faculty of Applied Biological Sciences, Gifu University, 1-1 Yanagido, Gifu, 501-1193, Japan

    Tsukasa Okano & Keiko Ito

  3. Laboratory of Wildlife Biology, Department of Environmental Veterinary Sciences, Graduate School of Veterinary Medicine, Hokkaido University, Kita 18, Nishi 9, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido, 060-0818, Japan

    Toshio Tsubota

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  1. Masahito Kubo
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  2. Tsukasa Okano
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  3. Keiko Ito
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  4. Toshio Tsubota
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  5. Hiroki Sakai
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  6. Tokuma Yanai
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Correspondence to Tokuma Yanai.

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Kubo, M., Okano, T., Ito, K. et al. Muscular sarcocystosis in wild carnivores in Honshu, Japan. Parasitol Res 106, 213–219 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-009-1653-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-009-1653-0

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