Toxoplasma gondii infection in small ruminants from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan: Seroprevalence, spatial distribution and associated risk factors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The primary aim of this investigation was to assess the occurrence of Toxoplasma gondii infection among sheep and goats in five districts within the southern region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. Additionally, the study aimed to pinpoint potential factors associated with the spread of this infection. Serum samples were gathered from a total of 3505 small ruminants, comprising 1810 sheep and 1695 goats. These samples were then subjected to testing for anti-Toxoplasma antibodies using the Toxo-Latex slide Agglutination test. Concurrently, a predetermined questionnaire was employed to gather data on possible risk factors. The collected data underwent bivariate frequency analysis and multivariable logistic regression analyses. The findings revealed that 20.08% of the examined animals had positive results for anti-Toxoplasma antibodies. Notably, the prevalence of T. gondii was notably higher among sheep, with 21.8% of the sheep testing positive, as opposed to the 18% of tested goats (P = 0.007). The seroprevalence percentages were comparable across the five districts for both types of animals. For goats, the prevalence ranged from 16.8% to 20.1%, while for sheep, it ranged from 20.2% to 24%. Among the younger population (≤1 year), the seroprevalence was statistically lower at 17.7% compared to the older population (>1 year) at 23.1% (P < 0.001). Female animals demonstrated a higher prevalence (21.9%) in contrast to their male counterparts (17.8%) (P = 0.002). Animals reared for breeding and milking purposes displayed a greater seroprevalence (23.9%) compared to those intended for sale (17.7%) (P < 0.001). Furthermore, animals kept under a transhumant production system displayed the lowest prevalence (18.9%), followed by sedentary (21.7%) and nomadic (31.2%) herds (P < 0.001). The outcomes of this study highlight the importance of implementing management interventions to curtail T. gondii infection among animals within the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Such measures hold the potential to reduce associated public health risks and enhance the profitability of farmers.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".