The prevalence of intestinal trichomonads in Chinese pigs

•Tritrichomonas suis, Tetratrichomonas buttreyi, and Pentatrichomonas hominis can cause intestinal infection in pigs.•The prevalence of trichomonads in Chinese pigs ranged between 12.03-24.05%.•T. buttreyi showed that there were host-specific polymorphisms within SSU rRNA amplification products.

Intestinal infection of pigs with trichomonads, (Tritrichomonas suis, Tetratrichomonas buttreyi, and Pentatrichomonas hominis) has been reported in many countries, such as the Philippines, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. However, the prevalence of trichomonads infection of swine in China has not yet been investigated. In this study, we used small subunit ribosomal RNA genes to detect the prevalence of T. suis, T. buttreyi and P. hominis among 158 fecal specimens from healthy pigs. Infection rates were 12.03%(19/158), 14.57% (23/158), and 24.05% (38/158) for T. suis, T. buttreyi and P. hominis, respectively. Molecular evolutionary analysis showed minor allelic variation in T. buttreyi from China compared to T. buttreyi isolated from other hosts in different parts of the world.