Toxoplasma gondii, Sarcocystis sp. and Neospora caninum-like parasites in seals from northern and eastern Canada: potential risk to consumers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Zoonotic parasites of seals that are harvested for food may pose a health risk when seal meat or organ tissues of infected animals are eaten raw or undercooked. In this study, 124 tissue samples from 81 seals, comprising four species, were collected from northern and eastern Canada. Tissues from 23 ringed seals (Pusa hispida), 8 hooded seals (Cystophora cristata), 21 harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus), and 29 grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) were tested for parasites of the Sarcocystidae family including Toxoplasma gondii, Sarcocystis spp., and Neospora spp. using nested PCR followed by Sanger sequencing. Toxoplasma gondii DNA was present in 26% of ringed seals, 63% of hooded seals, 57% of harp seals, and 31% of grey seals. Sarcocystis sp. DNA was found in 9% of ringed seals, 13% of hooded seals, 14% of harp seals, and 4% of grey seals, while N. caninum-like DNA was present in 26% of ringed seals. While it is unclear how pinnipeds may become infected with these protozoans, horizontal transmission is most likely. However, one harp seal pup (4 days old) was PCR-positive for T. gondii, suggesting vertical transmission may also occur. Phylogenetic analysis of the 18S gene region indicates that Sarcocystis sp. in these seals belongs to a unique genotype. Furthermore, this study represents a new host report for T. gondii in harp seals, a new host and geographic report for N. caninum-like parasites in ringed seals, and four new hosts and geographic reports for Sarcocystis sp. These results demonstrate that parasites of the Sarcocystidae family are prevalent in northern and eastern Canadian seals. While the zoonotic potential of Sarcocystis sp. and the N. caninum-like parasite are unclear, consumption of raw or undercooked seal meat or organ tissues pose a risk of T. gondii infection to consumers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".