| Abstract: | A serological survey of Toxoplasma gondii wasconducted on 766 domestic and peridomestic rodents from 46 trapping sitesthroughout the city of Niamey, Niger. A low seroprevalence was found over thewhole town with only 1.96% of the rodents found seropositive. However,differences between species were important, ranging from less than 2% in trulycommensal Mastomys natalensis, Rattus rattusand Mus musculus, while garden-associated Arvicanthis niloticusdisplayed 9.1% of seropositive individuals. This is in line with previousstudies on tropical rodents - that we reviewed here - which altogether show thatToxoplasma seroprevalence in rodent is highly variable,depending on many factors such as locality and/or species. Moreover, although wewere not able to decipher statistically between habitat or species effect, sucha contrast between Nile grass rats and the other rodent species points towards apotentially important role of environmental toxoplasmic infection. This woulddeserve to be further scrutinised since intra-city irrigated cultures areextending in Niamey, thus potentially increasing Toxoplasmacirculation in this yet semi-arid region. As far as we are aware of, our studyis one of the rare surveys of its kind performed in Sub-Saharan Africa and thefirst one ever conducted in the Sahel. |
