Evaluation of the potential reservoir dog in Visceral Leishmaniasis in two municipalities of the State of Ceará

Abstract

This study had the objective of evaluating the reservoir potential of the dog in visceral leishmaniasis (VL) besides to identify the possible more frequent clinical signs associated to the infectiousness and seropositiveness. Dogs with positive (n=38) and negative (n=11) for the serological ELISA test were studied through xenodiagnosis experiments to determine the infectiousness to phlebotomine vector Lutzomyia longipalpis. Infectiousness for Lu. longipalpis was observed in 36,84% (14) of the dogs from seropositive group and none of the seronegative (p<0.05). The clinical signs loss of weight and onychogryphosis showed to be associated with seropositiveness and infectiousness. Younger dogs (<3 years) infected sand flies with a higher frequency. These results confirm the importance of the dog in the epidemiology of VL as infection source for the sand fly and they indicate that the clinical signs loss of weight, onychogryphosis and age are a strong indicative of the dogs infectiousness potential.