Abstract
This article reports the first verified cases of infection by Trichophyton bullosum in Africa since the description of the fungus, isolated in 1933 from the coat of horses in Tunisia and Mali. We found the fungus in cutaneous samples obtained from donkeys suffering from severe dermatitis with areas of alopecia and scaling in the surroundings of Cairo (Egypt). Fungal elements (arthroconidia and hyphae) were seen at the microscopy of material collected by skin scraping and digested in NaOH. Fungal colonies grown on various culture media were identified through PCR and sequencing of the ITS rDNA region. Since the original report in Africa and the Middle East, only a few cases have been reported thus far in humans in France and two cases in horses in the Czech Republic and Japan. Trichophyton bullosum seems thus an infrequent cause of dermatophytosis. However, the actual prevalence of this pathogen may be underestimated due to the similarity with T. verrucosum, a predominant cause of infection in cattle, occasionally found on horses and donkeys. Indeed, the two fungi can be distinguished only via molecular methods, which are poorly employed in epidemiological studies on equine and bovine dermatophytosis. The present study results add to our knowledge on the ecology of this poorly explored dermatophyte, supporting the concept that equines are the primary hosts of T. bullosum and confirming the presence of this pathogen in Africa. At the same time, these are the first unequivocally documented infections in donkeys due to T. bullosum.
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The fungal isolates are publically available in the culture collection CCF (Culture Collection of Fungi, Department of Botany, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic). The DNA sequences obtained in this study were deposited into the GenBank database (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Radek Zmítko for the help with graphical adjustments of analysis outputs. We thank Pavlína Lysková and Lenka Zídková for their assistance and advice.
Funding
The contribution of Vit Hubka was supported by the Charles University Research Centre program no. 204069 and Czech Academy of Sciences Long-term Research Development Project [RVO: 61388971].
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Peano, A., Arnoldi, S., Čmoková, A. et al. Re-discovery of Trichophyton bullosum in North Africa as a cause of severe dermatophytosis in donkeys. Folia Microbiol 67, 265–275 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-021-00930-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-021-00930-9