Micro agglutination test (MAT) based sero-prevalence study of salmonellosis in dogs

A total of 575 dog serum samples of different breeds, age, sex and places were collected which were screened for Salmonella antibodies/agglutinins against somatic (O) and flagellar (H) antigens using MAT. The agglutinin titre of ≥ 80 and ≥ 320 against ‘O’ and ‘H’ antigens, respectively were considered positive. An overall sero-prevalence of Salmonella agglutinins in dogs against ‘O’ and ‘H’ antigens were 73.22 and 53.91%, respectively. Amongst ‘O’ and ‘H’, the most prevalent agglutinins were against 3,10 (60.35%) and e,n,x (40.87%), respectively. The breed-wise distribution of positive agglutinin titre against ‘O’ and ‘H’ antigens was highest 90.79% in Labrador and 70.00% in Great Dane dogs, respectively. The age-wise prevalence of the maximum positive agglutinin titre against ‘O’ and ‘H’ antigens were high in the age group 7 to less than 9 years. The sex of dogs had no significant influence on the prevalence of agglutinin titre against Salmonella antigens. The prevalence of positive agglutinin titre against ‘O’ and ‘H’ antigens was the highest 91.43 and 71.43%, respectively in the serum samples of dogs of the National Training Centre for Dogs (NTCD), Tekanpur, Gwalior.