Seroprevalences of Antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii in Stray Dogs in Taipei

[[abstract]]Toxplasma gondii infection is widespread and is of economic as well as public health importance. To provide the basic data necessary for studying the epidemiology of toxoplasmosis in stray dogs in Taipei, the seroprevalences of IgG and IgM antibodies to T. gondii were measured using a kinetics-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in conjunction with immunoblotting. Immunoblotting is able to detect the presence of antibody to T. gondii-specific 30 KD-surface antigen. The results showed that total seropositivity was 8% (n=100) with a 95% confidence interval of (0.0352, 0.152). The prevalences of IgG and IgM antibody to T. gondii were 6% and 3% respectively. Nevertheless, this difference was not statistically significant (McNemar’s TEST, P=0.0898). Only a small number of stray dogs had active T. gondii infection (IgM positive). The prevalences of T. gondii antibody were 11.4% (n=44) for males and 5.4% (n=56) for females. Antibody prevalence was not sex-dependent (Fisher’s exact test, P=0.2951).