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Coyote tapeworm infection is linked to farmland and managed green space near Chicago

Research: Ecology, Disease, parasites & microbiology

The tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis causes alveolar echinococcosis, a serious disease in people. Coyotes are one of the parasite’s main definitive hosts in urban areas—animals in which the adult tapeworm lives and reproduces. In the Chicago metropolitan area, researchers tested fecal samples from 85 coyotes (Canis latrans); 27.1% tested positive.

Infection was linked to agricultural and managed land

Coyotes with a greater share of agricultural land or altered open space within their home ranges had higher odds of infection. Such spaces included golf courses, cemeteries and manicured parks. The analysis gave odds ratios of 2.84 for agricultural land and 2.07 for altered open spaces. An odds ratio compares infection odds between conditions in the analysis: values above 1 indicate higher odds, but they are not percentage-point increases or direct estimates of an individual coyote’s probability of infection. Infection status was not associated with age or sex in this sample.

Because people and pets also use these landscapes, the authors suggest they may be relevant to the potential spread of the parasite to other hosts. The coyote findings identify places where surveillance and public-health outreach may be useful, but do not show that transmission to people or pets occurred.

Sources and image credit

  1. Shared landscapes, shared risk: Echinococcus multilocularis infection in coyotes is linked to agricultural land and altered green space in a major U.S. metropolitan areaPrimærkilde: preprint. Kontrollgrunnlaget var det tilgjengelige sammendraget, som oppgir studieområde, prøvetaking, hovedfunn og forfatternes tolkning.
  2. bioRxiv archive listing for the preprintOffisiell arkivoppføring bekrefter tittel, DOI og dato for offentliggjøring.

Image: Yathin S Krishnappa / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Representative photograph. · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source

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