BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Anim. Sci.
Sec. Animal Physiology and Management
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fanim.2025.1679658
Epidemiological Assessment and Outbreak Report of Trypanosoma vivax in Dairy Cattle from the Brazilian Semiarid region
Provisionally accepted
Basílio Felizardo Lima Neto1
Jordania Oliveira Silva2
Felipe Boniedj Ventura Alvares1Samira Pereira Batista1
Geraldo Moreira Silva Filho1Gláucia Diojânia Azevedo Medeiros2Carla Monadeli Filgueira Rodrigues3Bruno Rafael Fermino3
Vinícius Longo Ribeiro Vilela4*Thais Ferreira Feitosa2- 1Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Campina Grande, Brazil
- 2Instituto Federal de Educacao Ciencia e Tecnologia da Paraiba, João Pessoa, Brazil
- 3Instituto Federal de Educacao Ciencia e Tecnologia de Rondonia, Porto Velho, Brazil
- 4Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia da Paraíba, Sousa, Brazil
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This study aimed to estimate the prevalence and identify risk factors associated with Trypanosoma vivax infection in dairy cattle herds in the Brazilian Semiarid region, as well as report an outbreak of trypanosomiasis. A total of 390 cattle blood samples were collected from 61 farms in the states of Ceará e Paraíba, and a conventional PCR was performed for the diagnosis of T. vivax. Positive samples were bidirectionally sequenced. An epidemiological questionnaire was applied on each farm, and the resulting data were subjected to univariate and multivariate analyses to identify potential risk factors. An outbreak was detected in the municipality of Orós, Ceará, where cases of abortion and estrus repetition were reported among cows. Of the 390 samples analyzed, 1.02% (4/390) tested positive for T. vivax. No statistically significant risk factors were identified. All positive samples originated from the farm in Orós, where 80% (4/5) of the tested animals were infected. Similarity analysis using BLAST revealed 100% identity with T. vivax isolates previously reported in donkeys, sheep, and cattle from the Brazilian semi-arid region, and high similarity with isolates from South American countries and West Africa. In the phylogenetic analysis, sequences TviBrCe13 and TviBrCe14 clustered with isolates from the Brazilian Semiarid region, as well as with South American and West African strains. It was concluded that the prevalence of T. vivax in the Brazilian Semiarid region is low, although the area remains susceptible to outbreak events.
Keywords: Trypanosomiasis, Brazilian northeast, Epidemiological survey, Molecular diagnosis, phylogenetic analysis
Received: 04 Aug 2025; Accepted: 25 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lima Neto, Oliveira Silva, Alvares, Batista, Silva Filho, Medeiros, Rodrigues, Fermino, Vilela and Feitosa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Vinícius Longo Ribeiro Vilela, vilelavlr@yahoo.com.br
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.