Symptoms of Canine Leishmaniosis in Tunisian Dogs

Canine leishmaniosis (CanL) is a fatal disease caused by Leishmania infantum which is a zoonotic protozoan transmitted to humans from dogs through sandflies. In Tunisia, there is a lack of knowledge on CanL risk and protective factors that limits the possibilities to design control strategies. In this study, 269 dogs suffering from CanL that were presented by their owners to the clinic of the National School of Veterinary Medicine of Sidi Thabet (Tunisia), were examined. Male dogs were more infected than female dogs (sex-ratio = 1.53). The age distribution in dogs has a normal distribution; mostly animals less than 4 years old (48.7%) gets affected by this disease. The majority of the animals were German Shepherded (14.4%) followed by Staffordshire (12.6%) and Rottweiler (9.6%). Most of the dogs live outdoor (87%), did not receive any acaricidal treatment (88.5%) and were not dewormed (70.3%). Poor body condition (73.2%), depilation (69.1%), lymph node enlargement (67.3%) and lethargy (60.2%) were the most frequent symptoms. Further studies need to be carried out to establish the presence of a relation between the zymodems and the clinical typology of CanL. It is also important to know if these disparities were due to differences in the canine population under study, to inherent differences in susceptibility to the disease or to a genetic diversity of the parasite.