Vol. 11, Special Issue 6 (2022)

Author(s):
Sunitha Karunakaran, Gopika Thattat Gopinathan and Hareesh Sasisdharan

Abstract:
Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease caused by bacterium belonging to genus Leptospira. Domesticated animals like dogs, cats as well as human beings can get infected with the disease. Signs and symptoms can range from mild (headaches, muscle pains and fevers) to severe symptoms like bleeding in lungs or meningitis. The acute severe form of disease called Weils disease-causes the infected individual or animal to become jaundiced, develop kidney failure and death within days. Laboratory diagnosis of leptospirosis under field conditions is very difficult and depends mainly on indirect antibody detection tests like Microscopic Agglutination Tests (MAT) or IgM/IgG one step ELISA tests. MAT is difficult to perform under filed conditions and it requires labs with sophisticated infrastructure to maintain live cultures of Leptospira. During acute phase of disease-MAT is not specific because of cross reactivity between serovars. The aim of present study is to standardize a Real Time (qPCR) protocol based on taqman chemistry for rapid diagnosis of pathogenic leptospires in humans, canines and felines EDTA blood samples collected during acute or febrile phase where there is most likely chance of leptospires in blood (Bacteremic phase). RT PCR will also be used to identify carrier status in dogs considered as clinically normal but possibility of environmental exposure to pathogenic leptospires or animal may be suffering from undetected or subclinical infection as evident from the detection of lipL32 gene of pathogenic leptospires in EDTA blood.