Small Mammals in Fenced Houses as Source of Leptospirosis to Livestock Pets animals and Humans in Morogoro Municipality, Tanzania

Abstract

The goal of this study was to determine the prevalence of leptospirosis in small mammals in Morogoro municipality specifically in fenced houses  keeping livestock and pets. The mammals were trapped using Sherman, box and Havaharts traps. The captured mammals were anaesthetized by diethyl ether, blood was drawn either from the heart puncture by using 2ml syringe or supraorbital veins by using blood capillaries and transferred into Eppendorf tubes then centrifuged at 4000rpm for 5minutes to obtain sera. Microscopic agglutination test (MAT) was performed using Serovars  namely Sokoine, Kenya and Lora on sera samples, in which U-shaped wells micro titre plates were filled with 50μl Phosphate saline (PBS) while in the first well was filled with 90μl, followed by 10μl of sera. They were serially diluted to the fourth well, then 50μl of live Leptospira antigen was added in  each well and shaken gently. The mixture was incubated at 30ºC for two hours. Agglutination test results were examined under dark field microscope. Seventy small mammals were trapped, only two species namely Rattus rattus and Mastomys natalens is were identified. From the MAT test, 16 (10 R. rattus and 6 M. natalensis) sera samples showed positive results with respect to a particular serovar. The results indicated R. rattus to have high prevalence than M. natalensis. The overall prevalence was 22.9% whereby serovars Sokoine had 11.4%, Kenya 5.7% and Lora 5.7%. Small mammals normally shed leptospires to the environment and feed containers of livestock and pet animals through their urine. In turn leptospires get access to livestock, pet animals and humans either by being ingested or penetrated the intact skin and finally develop the disease. Control of small mammals that are reservoirs of leptopires is very important and this control will reduce the burden of leptospirosis in humans, livestock and pets found sharing the same environment

Key words: Small mammals, livestock, pets, fenced houses, humans, lepstospires