Toxoplasma gondii in animals and food: results of four-years monitoring by the official italian zoonoses informative system.
Creators: name: Percipalle, Maurizio
name: Giunta, Renato Paolo
name: Salvaggio, Antonio
name: Scalzo, Fabrizio
name: Barbagallo, Antonio
name: Marino, Anna Maria Fausta
Publisher: name: INFN Open Access Repository
Year: 2021
Subjects: Toxoplasma gondii, food safety, informative system, SINZOO

description: When considering human toxoplasmosis, food remains the main source of infection. Whether is meat from susceptible animals that naturally harbour <em>Toxoplasma gondii</em> tissue cysts or food like fresh vegetables or fishery products (mussels, fish) contaminated by environmentally derived oocysts, information about animal toxoplasmosis prevalence should continue to be under the spotlight. Directive 2003/99/EC<em> </em>of the European Parliament and the Council classifies toxoplasmosis and its causative agent as a class B zoonosis/agent for which monitoring depends on the epidemiological situation. Surveillance systems on animal toxoplasmosis are different across Europe and regulated by national legislation. In Italy, administrative regions are called annually to submit data on animal toxoplasmosis to SINZOO (Zoonoses Informative System) that is part of the Veterinary Informative System managed by the Italian Ministry of Health. Foodborne zoonoses data collected at the national level are then processed and summarized by EFSA to became part of the annual EFSA/ECDC joint European Union summary reports on trends and sources of zoonoses, zoonotic agents and foodborne outbreaks. No foodborne outbreaks of toxoplasmosis have been reported in Italy during 2017, the most recent year for which a report is available. Unfortunately, prevalence data are often the results of fragmented researches or clinical investigations but, nevertheless, they provide baseline data to monitor epidemiological trends for guiding public health preventive measures. Over the past four years (2014-2017), in Italy, sheep, cattle, pig, goats, wild boars and wild ruminants were the main species tested besides pet animals. Prevalence of the infection ranged: 3.49-11.10% in cattle (209 to 2289 animals tested); 11.46-34.55% in pigs (37 to 2051 animals tested); 18.01-45.72% in sheep (912 to 2682 animals tested); 5.98-23.25% in goats (234 to 432 animals tested. Positive among wildlife ranged from 0 to 10.24% for wild boars (26 to 901 animals tested) and from 0.76 to 11.25% for wild ruminants (240 to 394 animals tested). For cats, that are solely responsible for contamination with environmentally-resistant oocysts, the prevalence ranged from 19.48 to 34.77% (77 to 696 animals tested). Although these data cannot support epidemiological analyses, they suggest that pigs and small ruminants are still the major sources of meatborne toxoplasmosis. Cattle are also under a special watch list since beef consumption has been predicted as the most important source of meatborne toxoplasmosis at least in Italy and the Netherlands as resulting from quantitative risk assessment studies. Cattle are often found positive to serological screening although direct detection of <em>T. gondii</em> via biological assay or PCR is uncommon with lack of concordance between antibodies and parasite DNA detection. The informative system also reports very limited information on food such as fresh vegetables or fishery products that can be contaminated by <em>T. gondii </em>oocysts dispersed in the environment although 1 sample of mussels and 3 samples of fish resulted positive by PCR in 2017. These findings suggest that surveillance on animal toxoplasmosis and meat and other food contamination with <em>T. gondii</em> should be enhanced since it is one of the few effective tools to control the parasite diffusion and prevent the transmission of the zoonosis.