Publicación:

Presence of Leptospire spp. in urban bats from Sincelejo, Sucre, Colombia.

Resumen en inglés

Leptospirosis is one of the most frequent zoonoses worldwide and occurs in tropical, subtropical and temperate areas. The genus Leptospira comprises saprophytic and pathogenic species. The latter isolated from several animals that serve as reservoirs and carriers. The presence of bats in urban areas has increased for various reasons, profusion of plants, lack of predators, presence of luminaries, which has increased the chances of contact between bats, humans and/or pets. The aim of this work was to investigate the presence of pathogenic Leptospira in bats captured in the city of Sincelejo, using the molecular PCR technique. Mist nets were used to capture the bats and these were sacrificed using ether to obtain samples of renal tissue. A fragment of the LipL32 gene was amplified by PCR technique. We identified three families of bats amongst our sample and 26% of them presented pathogenic Leptospira DNA. This represents a great risk to the community in this region.