Prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in sheep meats purchased from retail stores in Central Anatolia, Turkey

Abstract

Toxoplasmosis is one of the most important foodborne parasitic diseases of humans. In particular, sheep muscles are significant sources of infection in the transmission of toxoplasmosis. Carnivorism is the most important transmission route for human populations. The aim of this study was to detect the prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii tissue cysts in sheep meats in retail stores of Turkey. A total of 250 boneless sheep meat samples were purchased from randomly selected retail stores in different locations of Ankara and Kirikkale provinces of Turkey. The homogenized meat samples were centrifuged with Percoll dilutions. The tissue cysts were removed by pipette and analyzed under light microscope. Additionally, nested PCR was used to detect T. gondii DNA in the meat samples. Tissue cysts were observed in 21.2% of the meat samples with Percoll gradient centrifugation. The prevalences of the tissue cysts were detected as 20.8% in the meat samples obtained from Ankara and 22.4% from Kirikkale (P > 0.05). T. gondii DNA was detected in 40.8% of the meat samples with nested PCR.