Keisuke Suganuma, Assistant Professor, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, and Narantsatsral, a researcher at the National Institute of Veterinary Medicine, Mongolia, have succeeded in establishing a culture strain of "Kousei Tripanosoma," which is the pathogen of the sexual disease "Kouseki" in horse animals.
"Peacema" is a venereal disease of the genus Trypanosoma caused by a protozoan called "Trypanosoma". Infected horses develop edema and ulcers in their reproductive organs, develop anemia and neurological abnormalities, and eventually die. ..
In developing countries where agriculture is the economic base, the spread of epidemics causes great damage to agricultural production, while in developed countries, international imports and exports of horse organisms such as Olympic equestrian competitions and horse racing are increasing year by year. The World Organization for Animal Health (WHO for Animals) has identified the epidemic as an "internationally important livestock disease".However, the culture standard strains and efficient culture acclimation methods that are indispensable for advancing research on epidemics have not been established, and the current situation is that countermeasures and basic research are lagging behind.
Therefore, the research group discovered a severely infected horse with infection in Mongolia, and isolated and conditioned the culture of trypanosoma from its genital organs (to enable the laboratory to continuously culture and maintain trypanosoma). Started research for the purpose.By using soft agar medium, we succeeded for the first time in the world to acclimate and incubate trypanosoma of epidemic from the reproductive organs of infected horses directly to the culture conditions without using experimental animals.
The soft agar medium is easier to carry and handle than the conventional liquid medium or the culture acclimation method by inoculating experimental animals, and the growth rate of the culture-acclimated epidemic tripanosoma is fast, so it is efficient in the field. Epidemic tripanosoma It is considered to be a suitable method for isolation and culture acclimation.
By using the trypanosoma culture strain established this time, not only the development of preventive methods for sickness and new therapeutic agents for sickness, but also the genomic information can be registered in a public database and provided to researchers all over the world. It is also expected that other trypanosomasis (African sleeping sickness and Chagas disease) research will progress.
This research result was published in the scientific journal "Parasites & Vectors August 2016, 8".
