Detection of caprine arthritis-encephalitis virus (CAEV) infection in goats is currently limited to serologic testing or cell culture. We developed a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay to detect CAEV sequences in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), synovial fluid cells (SFC), and milk cells (MC) obtained from infected goats. Results were positive for 18 of 20 PBMC, 8 of 8 MC, and 5 of...

Little information is available about the seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum infections in goats in Romania and even in Europe. During 2007-2010, 735 serum samples were collected from dairy goats located in 4 historical regions (Crişana, Maramureş, Transylvania and Muntenia) of Romania. Sera were analyzed for T. gondii and N. caninum antibodies (IgG type) by enzyme-linked ...

The present study was conducted to investigate the seroprevalence of Toxoplasma (T.) gondii in goats. Out of 200 goats 104 were seropositive showing an overall prevalence of 52%. T. gondii was more prevalent (55%) in female goats as compared to male goats (25%) with statistical significance (P<0.05). Results regarding the relationship between different breeds of goats and T. gondii revealed tha...

Scrapie in goats is a transmissible, fatal prion disease, which is endemic in the British goat population. The recent success in defining caprine PRNP gene variants that provide resistance to experimental and natural classical scrapie has prompted the authors to conduct a survey of PRNP genotypes in 10 goat breeds and 52 herds to find goats with the resistant K222 allele. They report here the f...

Anaplasma species are obligate intracellular pathogens that can cause tick-borne diseases in mammalian hosts. To date, very few studies of their occurrence in Korean native goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) have been reported. In the present study, we investigated Anaplasma infection of Korean native goats on Jeju Island, Republic of Korea, and performed phylogenetic analysis based on the 16S rRNA ...

Sheep and goats are popular examples of livestock kept on city farms. In these settings, close contacts between humans and animals frequently occur. Although it is widely accepted that small ruminants can carry numerous zoonotic agents, it is unknown which of these agents actually occur in sheep and goats on city farms in Germany. We sampled feces and nasal liquid of 48 animals (28 goats, 20 sh...

To determine the genetic diversity, origins, and the phylogeography of Chinese dairy goats, we analyzed 162 complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Dloop sequences from 9 dairy goat breeds and compared them with 8 goat sequences that were previously reported in GenBank. The length of the mtDNA D-loop was 1,212 to 1,215 bp, and 97 polymorphic sites were identified. We also defined 62 haplotypes, incl...

Milk and faecal samples from sheep and goats with clinical symptoms of paratuberculosis were examined for the presence of Mycobacterium avium subsp.paratuberculosis by culture in M7H11 and Herrold’s, as well as in MGIT. The determination was based on two groups of clinically suspected animals in Northern Greece: group I consisted of 65 goats and group II consisted of 35 sheep, belonging to 8 go...

Identifying species or individuals that feed upon other species of animals is an important aspect of some predation studies. We evaluated the effectiveness with which the biomark associated with iophenoxic acid (IA) injections was transferred from domestic goats to coyotes (Canis latrans) that fed on them. We injected doses of 100, 300, or 1,000 mg of IA into goats to raise serum iodine levels,...

Coxiella burnetii is an intracellular bacterial pathogen that causes Q fever. Infected pregnant goats are a major source of human infection. However, the tissue dissemination and excretion pathway of the pathogen in goats are still poorly understood. To better understand Q fever pathogenesis, we inoculated groups of pregnant goats via the intranasal route with a recent Dutch outbreak C. burneti...