Citation (Harvard):
OC. Byrne, J., Byrne, A. W., Zintl, A., Jankowska, K., Coulange, E., de Waal, T., McCarthy, G., O’Keeffe, J., Hamnes, I. S. and Fogarty, U. (2019) ‘Identification and epidemiological analysis of Perostrongylus falciformis infestation in Irish badgers’, Irish Veterinary Journal. Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 72(1). doi: 10.1186/s13620-019-0144-6.
Abstract:
Background: The lungworm, Perostrongylus falciformis (fomerly known as Aelurostrongylus falciformis) has been
identified in badgers (Meles meles) in Britain, the Russian Federation, Italy, Norway, Poland, Ukraine, Bosnia Herzegovina
and Romania, while Aelurostrongylus pridhami has been reported from badgers in Spain.
Results: Pulmonary tissue from 1580 Irish badgers was examined and an estimated prevalence of 32.09% (95% CI:
29.79–34.45%) of this parasite was detected. Confirmation of its occurrence was made by PCR analysis on a subset of
the population.
Conclusion: Infestation was widely distributed throughout the Republic of Ireland, with a trend towards higher
infestation risk in western versus eastern counties. In addition males were at a higher risk of infestation than females
and juveniles were at a significantly higher risk than adult badgers.
Rights:
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
