Cerebral Hydatidosis in a Lamb

A 6-month-old Afshari male lamb was examined on a semi-intensive farm due to anorexia and neurologic signs, including head tilt, circling, bilateral positive menace response and stupor. The sheep was slaughtered and necropsied. After routine parasitology and histopathology procedures, the occurrence of cerebral hydatidosis was confirmed. This study represents the first report of cerebral hydatidosis in sheep and suggests that cerebral hydatid cysts should be considered possible etiological agents for neurological syndromes in sheep. The studied hydatid cyst was sequenced for the COX1 partial gene and submitted as a new strain to the NCBI GenBank with the accession number OR984434.1 and name Jabbasi1. The sequence of this isolate was also compared with other sequences in GenBank using a phylogenetic tree. On the basis of phylogenetic analysis, our strain was classified as a G1 strain and showed high homology to other G1 strains reported from Iran, Iraq and so forth.