Alterations of cardiac and renal biomarkers in horses naturally infected with theileria equi

Saman Ahmadpour; Bijan Esmaeilnejad; Bahram Dalir-Naghadeh; Siamak Asri-Rezaei

doi:10.1016/j.cimid.2020.101502

Alterations of cardiac and renal biomarkers in horses naturally infected with theileria equi

Comp Immunol Microbiol Infect Dis. 2020 May 30:71:101502. doi: 10.1016/j.cimid.2020.101502. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Saman Ahmadpour¹, Bijan Esmaeilnejad², Bahram Dalir-Naghadeh¹, Siamak Asri-Rezaei¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Internal Medicine and Clinical Pathology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran.
² Department of Pathobiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran. Electronic address: b.esmaeilnejad@urmia.ac.ir.

PMID: 32505763
DOI: 10.1016/j.cimid.2020.101502

Abstract

Equine theileriosis due to Theileria equi is probably the most widespread and pathogenic disease of equines, which comes with major cardiac and renal complications. This study was undertaken to investigate the biomarkers of cardiac and renal functions in horses infected with T. equi and determine the association between these parameters and the level of parasitemia. Giemsa-stained blood smears from 300 horses with ages of 3-4 years old were examined for detection of T. equi on erythrocytes. Moreover, multiplex PCR was employed for confirmation of the diagnosis in the 28 positive cases. Based on the rate of red blood cell infection, the infected animals were subdivided into horses with low (n = 9), moderate (n = 13) and high (n = 6) parasitemia. The concentrations of urea, creatinine, cystatin-C, cardiac troponin I (cTn-I), homocysteine (Hcy), myocardial fractions of creatine kinase (CK-MB) and d-dimer were determined in control (healthy) horses (n = 20) and the infected animals. The results revealed that both the renal (urea, creatinine and cystatin-C) and the cardiac (cTn-I, Hcy, CK-MB and d-dimer) biomarkers increased in a parasitemia burden-dependent pattern. However, urea, creatinine, cTn-I and d-dimer levels were not significantly influenced in the horses infected with low rate (<1 %) of parasitemia (p> 0.05). Moreover, all of the biomarkers were significantly and positively associated with the parasitemia (R²> 0.5). In conclusion, T. equi infection was related to cardiac and renal complications evidenced by increase in the levels of biomarkers and evaluation of these indices may have promise for early diagnosis of the complications.

Keywords: Cardio-Renal biomarkers; Parasitemia; T. Equihorse.