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Trichinella Was Detected in 597 of 43,228 Wild Boar Carcasses in Bulgaria

Dead wild boar after a hunt, probably in Serbia
Research · Disease, parasites & microbiology

A five-season survey of wild boar (Sus scrofa) in Bulgaria found Trichinella larvae in 597 of 43,228 carcasses examined between October 2020 and February 2025. The animals had been taken during regular hunting seasons and muscle samples were tested by artificial digestion.

Trichinella are parasitic nematodes whose larvae can persist in muscle tissue. Wild boar help maintain the parasites in nature and are also relevant to human health because people can acquire trichinellosis by eating raw or undercooked infected meat.

Most identified infections were T. britovi

Larvae from 238 positive animals were suitable for submission to the European Union Reference Laboratory for Parasites for species identification. Multiplex PCR identified Trichinella britovi in 186 of these isolates. Species identification failed in the remaining 52 because DNA recovery was insufficient, so the study cannot exclude other Trichinella species among the untyped positive samples.

Most positive wild boar came from southern Bulgaria

The positive carcasses were strongly concentrated in southern Bulgaria: 558 of the 597 infected wild boar came from southern regions, compared with 39 from the north. The authors note that the study did not directly test whether wildlife population dynamics or the presence of other reservoir hosts explained this geographical pattern.

Map of Trichinella-positive wild boar carcasses across regions of Bulgaria, 2020 to 2025
Geographical distribution of Trichinella-positive wild boar carcasses in Bulgaria in 2020–2025; values are positive samples by region and T. britovi isolates are shown in brackets. Figure 1 from Lalkovski et al. (2026), Animals, CC BY 4.0.

T. britovi was the only species successfully identified in the 2020–2025 material, consistent with earlier Bulgarian records. Among 261 wild boar isolates identified between 2000 and 2024, 253 (97%) were T. britovi, seven were T. spiralis and one was T. pseudospiralis. The newer survey therefore reinforces the long-term dominance of T. britovi without showing that other species have disappeared. The study also underlines the food-safety relevance of surveillance because trichinellosis can be transmitted to people through raw or undercooked infected meat.

Sources and image credit

  1. Lalkovski, N., Celani, F., Tonanzi, D., & Marucci, G. (2026). Occurrence of Trichinella species in wild boar (Sus scrofa) populations across Bulgaria. Animals, 16(4), 648. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani16040648Primary peer-reviewed open-access article published 18 February 2026 under CC BY 4.0. The study examined 43,228 wild boar carcasses over five hunting seasons and found 597 Trichinella-positive animals; 186 of 238 successfully submitted isolates were identified as T. britovi, while 52 could not be typed.

Image: Vladalovac — wild boar hunting, probably in Serbia, photographed 22 November 2014; representative hunting/carcass image, not an animal from the Bulgarian survey. Source: Wikimedia Commons. · CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ · Source

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