Detección molecular de Hepatozoon felis en gatos con anemia en Uruguay

Hepatozoonosis is a parasitic disease caused by Hepatozoon spp. In general, it has a subclinical progression, and its symptoms are associated with an induced immunodeficiency triggered by a concomitant disease. The aim of this study was to detect by PCR the presence of Hepatozoon spp. in domestic cats from Uruguay. A total of 230 blood samples were analyzed obtained in nine of the 19 departments of Uruguay. Only were included samples from cats with early diagnosis of clinical anemia. For molecular diagnosis, two PCRs targeting two overlapping regions of 18S rRNA gene for Hepatozoon spp. were carried out. Nine out of 230 samples were positive for Hepatozoon spp., resulting in an infection frequency of 3.91%. The obtained sequences revealed 99.10 to 100% identity with Hepatozoon felis sequences registered in GenBank. Moreover, the phylogenetic analysis showed that the sequences obtained in this study clustered, with a high Bootstrap support with sequences of H. felis from different continents. To our knowledge, this is the first report of H. felis infecting domestic cats in Uruguay.