Comparative analysis of host resistance to Sarcoptes scabiei var.cuniculiin two different rabbit breeds
Wenrui Wei, Yongjun Ren, Nengxing Shen, Hongyu Song, Jing Xu, Ruiqi Hua, Haojie Zhang,Christiana Angel, Xiaobin Gu, Liangde Kuang, Yue Xie, Xuerong Peng, Xiaohong Xie and Guangyou Yang
Abstract
Background: Scabies, caused by infestation of the miteSarcoptes scabiei, is one of the most severe ectoparasitic diseases in rabbits. Scabies seriously affects the commercial rabbit breeding, causing severe economic losses. Host resistance toS. scabieiis an important factor in further development of the rabbit industry. In the present study, we compared the host resistance toS. scabieivar.cuniculiof a new breed of domestic rabbit propagated by the Sichuan Animal Sciences Academy (QiXing rabbit, QX) compared with that of a traditional rabbit breed in the domestic rabbit industry (IRA rabbit, IRA).
Methods: Both QX and IRA rabbits were experimentally infested with liveS. scabieivar.cuniculimites for 48 h. Then, during the course of four-week experimental infestation period, the body weight of rabbits was recorded every two weeks for calculating body-weight variations in comparison to the non-infested control rabbits. Skin lesions in the foot area were assessed on weekly basis and serum samples were tested weekly for the estimation of changes in the total antibody levels (IgG, IgE and IgM). Moreover, DNA extracted from the blood samples was amplified for analysis of the genetic diversity in the major histocompatibility complex, class II, DQ Alpha (MHC-DQA) gene.
Results: Compared to the IRA rabbits, the QX rabbits showed a significantly higher(P < 0.05) relative body weight gain compared to the non-infested control rabbits and significantly lower (P < 0.05) scores for foot skin lesions and higher levels of igg, ige and igm at weeks 1 to 4, week 2 and week 1 post-infestation, respectively. furthermore, a polymorphism site at position 103 bp of exon two of mhc-dqa gene and a different gene frequency were found between two rabbit breeds, suggesting the genetic basis for the differential host resistance to theS. scabieivar.cuniculibetween two rabbit breeds.
Conclusion: The QX rabbits showed higher host resistance toS. scabieivar.cuniculicompared to the IRA rabbits at the clinical, immunological and genetic levels. These results provide a reference for the breeding of rabbits with adequately improved and sustained host resistance to scabies in the domestic rabbit industry.
copyright:© The Author(s).
Parasites & Vectors (2019) 12:530. DOI: 10.1186/s13071-019-3764-5
Read Full Text: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-019-3764-5
