Vol. 10, Special Issue 5 (2021)

Author(s):
K Amudha, TMA Senthilkumar, M Parthiban, M Vijaya Bharathi and B Samuel Masilamoni Ronald

Abstract:
Leptospirosis is a major threat to livestock and an important zoonotic bacterial disease. Appropriate diagnostic measures for leptospirosis are considered difficult due to its broad, biphasic clinical manifestations and resemblance to other febrile illness. Even though isolation and identification of the disease causing serovars/strains are tedious, it provides details on pathogenic studies and information regarding prevention and control measures. Hence, the current study was aimed to evaluate isolation and characterization for detection of Leptospira spp. During the period of 2018-2019, a total of 50 samples including blood and urine were collected from clinically leptospirosis suspected cases of dogs. All the samples were inoculated into selective EMJH medium with 5-Fluorouracil. The isolates were subjected to phenotypic and genotypic characterization. Of all the samples, four Leptospira isolates were obtained. Phenotypic characterization of the isolates such as Dinger’s phenomenon, 5-Fluorouracil test, copper sulphate test, 8-Azaguanine test and growth at 13 °C confirmed the pathogenic nature of the isolates. Genotypic characterization of the isolates targeting virulent LipL32 gene and phylogenetic analysis also indicated the pathogenicity of the isolates.