Prevalence and multilocus genotyping of Cryptosporidium andersoni in dairy cattle and He cattle in Xinjiang, China

- The overall prevalence of Cryptosporidium spp. was 3.8% (70/1827) in cattle in Xinjiang, China.
- Eight C. andersoni MLST subtypes were identified in cattle in Xinjiang, China, and the MLST subtype A4,A4,A4,A1 was the predominate subtype.
- C. andersoni isolated from dairy cattle and He cattle in Xinjiang had an epidemic genetic structure.

Cryptosporidium andersoni is the predominant species in post-weaned and adult cattle in China. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and understand the transmission of cattle cryptosporidiosis in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, a total of 1827 fecal samples (436 from He cattle and 1391 from dairy cattle) were examined for the presence of C. andersoni-like oocysts by microscopy after Sheather's sugar flotation technique. The overall prevalence of C. andersoni-like was 3.8% (70/1827) and all the C. andersoni-like isolates were identified as C. andersoni at the SSU rRNA locus. Among the C. andersoni isolates, a total of 60 isolates were successfully characterized into eight multilocus sequence typing (MLST) subtypes using MLST analysis at the four microsatellite/minisatellite loci (MS1, MS2, MS3 and MS16), and three new subtypes were identified. The MLST subtype A4,A4,A4,A1 showed a predominance and a wide distribution among the eight MLST subtypes obtained in the investigated areas. The MLST subtypes A2,A4,A2,A1 and A4,A5,A2,A1 showed a unique distribution in the investigated areas. A linkage disequilibrium analysis showed the presence of an epidemic population genetic structure of C. andersoni isolated from dairy and He cattle in Xinjiang. These findings provide new insights into the genetic structure of C. andersoni isolates and are also helpful to explore the infection source of C. andersoni in cattle in Xinjiang, China.