Epidemiological typing of Brucella strains isolated from livestock by enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) PCR

Introduction and Objectives: Brucellosis is an important infectious disease with a worldwide distribution and an important cause of economic losses due to the livestock abortion and also a life-threatening multi-system disease in human. It is the most prevalent zoonotic disease and has led to more than 500 million cases worldwide; with more than 500 000 new cases annually. In comparison to the countries of Europe and North America and other developed regions of the world, brucellosis is still an endemic disease in Iran that one of the reasons is the free trade of infected livestock through the border countries. The aim of this study was to evaluate the epidemiological characteristics of Brucella strains isolated from livestock.Materials and Methods: The samples were collected from aborted livestock in sheep (n=145) and cattle (n=25) in the east and north of Iran especially in the cities of Mashhad and Gorgan, between 2015-2018. Out of 170 abortion samples, 60 Brucella Spp. Isolates were recovered and the ERIC-PCR was performed and finally, the band patterns were analyzed by the BioNumerics version 7.5 software.Results: Despite the different geographic regions which were sampled, the results of ERIC-PCR did not show any significant difference in the fingerprint patterns.Conclusion: The results of this study showed that, all isolated samples from the east and north of Iran have a common source and there was no geographical association between them and the border countries.

Keywords:

Brucellosis , ERIC-PCR , Livestock , Human , Iran