Prevalence and Molecular Characterization of Giardia duodenalis Assemblage D of Dogs in Egypt, and Its Zoonotic Implication

Background, Methods: To elucidate the prevalence and molecular characterization of Giardia infection in dogs, a cross-sectional study was performed on stray and housed dogs from different localities of Egypt. Results: A total of 986 fecal specimens were collected from dogs. The overall infection rate was 8.5%. The diarrheic dogs revealed higher prevalence of 14.43% than asymptomatic animals. The infection was more prevalent in younger dogs ( < 6 months) (9.5%) compared to older animals. Higher prevalence of infection was observed during the cold winter months (11.24%). The community owned dogs (stray dogs in the street) showed (11.75%) higher prevalence rate than pet dogs in the household environment (5.59%). Moreover, it was found that dogs fed on undercooked meat, and offal's were showing higher prevalence of giardiasis than dogs fed on canned meat. On the other hand, dogs subjected to regular grooming and good hygienic practices had lesser prevalence rate of the infection compared to unclean neglected dogs. Conclusions: The sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of the amplicons of 18SrRNA gene of G. duodenalis revealed that; they were closer to assemblage D necessitating urgent attention due to their zoonotic importance.