Isolation and Detection of Mycoplasma agalactiae from Semen Samples of Goats

Contagious agalactia (CA) is a highly infectious disease of goats and sheep, and is a form of Mycoplasmosis, which is usually enzootic. Since Mycoplasma agalactiae (M. agalactiae) is the main cause of this disease in goats, the aim of this study was to isolate and detect M. agalactiae from semen of goat bucks. Thirty-nine semen samples were collected from goat bulks, and all samples were cultured in PPLO broth medium supplemented for M. agalaciae isolation. The bacteria DNAs were extracted from clinical samples and the PCR assay was applied to detect Mycoplasma genus and M. agalactiae species using specific primers, which amplified a 163bp fragment in 16SrRNA gene and a 375bp fragment in lipoprotein gene. The PCR evaluations were performed for both the clinical samples and the cultures. Out of the 39 samples, 29 (74.3%) of the cultures were shown positive and typical Mycoplasma colonies grew on PPLO agar, which could be considered as the diagnostic method. In addition, 38 (97.4%) samples had positive PCR results for Mycoplasma genus and six (15.3%) of the samples were shown to be positive using PCR for M. agalactiae as the diagnostic method. In the present study, M. agalactiae was detected in semen of goat bulks for the first time in Iran. Therefore, it is recommended to concern semen as one of the significant sources for this pathogen and the possibility for transmission to the female goats through semen is highlighted. Moreover, presence of this microorganism in semen could be involved in infertility of goat population.