Isolation and genotyping of Clostridium perfringens from healthy and diarrheic dogs

Clostridium perfringens has been known as a cause ofdiarrhoea in dogs. The aim of this research was isolationC. perfringens by culturing and toxinotyping by PCRmolecular method. In this research 151 dogs’ faecal sampleswere collected from northwest of Iran, 131 of which were apparently healthy, and 20 of which were diarrheic. Thesefaecal samples were cultured on 5% sheep blood agar; the suspected colonies with double homolysis that using multiplex and single PCR assay were admitted to detecttoxinotypes of the isolates by specific primers. C. perfringens strains were isolated from 5/20 (25%) the diarrheic group and 31/131(23.8%) the non-diarrheic group. All isolates (36/151) were classified as C. perfringens type A (cpa+). Fourteen isolates (38.8%) with cpa+cpb2+netB-tpeLprofile and one isolate (2.8%) had cpa+cpe+netB-tpeLtoxin’s profile. More studies are needed to elucidate the epidemiology of C. perfringens in dogs and its role as a zoonotic agent and public health hazard. Based on author’sknowledge, this is the first study performed in order to isolation C. perfringens and genotyping from dogs in Iran. The cpa+cpe+ gene was reported from one C. perfringens isolated from healthy dogs