Reproductive disorders, especially miscarriages and stillbirths are the
most common problems described as being associated with congenital toxoplasmosis in sheep around the world (Weissmann, 2003). In Brazil, serological studies of the frequency of anti-T. gondii antibodies have shown the extent to which toxoplasmosis is present in sheep, with 7–55% testing positive for the disease ( Dubey, 2009). There is no data on T. gondii’s contribution to miscarriage and stillbirth in sheep and this is as yet the only study that has used a large number of tissue samples from naturally occurring miscarriages. In this XAV 939 study, a frequency of 14.3% of miscarriages associated with T. gondii infection was observed. This figure lies within the variation limits for frequency observed in other countries. The smallest percentage of miscarriages
found was 10.6%, reported by Steuber et al. (1995), in Germany. Masala et al., 2003 and Masala et al., 2007 found 11.1% and 18.1% respectively, in Italy. In the USA, a figure of 17.5% has been reported ( Dubey and Kirkbride, 1990). In Spain, a frequency of 16.9% has been registered ( Hurtado et al., 2001) with 23.2% miscarriages ( Pereira-Bueno et al., 2004). This variation in the frequencies observed in different countries may be due to the use of different diagnosis techniques. Similar to the results obtained by Pereira-Bueno et al. (2004), miscarriages were usually found to occur in the middle or towards the end of gestation. The use of techniques that detect or isolate the parasite in fetal or placental tissue confirms that buy PLX-4720 miscarriage was caused by T. gondii ( Owen et al., 1998a, Hurtado et al., 2001 and Masala et al., 2003). In this study, the number of samples testing positive using PCR was higher than that for the histopathological examination. These results differ from those previously described by Pereira-Bueno et Idoxuridine al. (2004), who studied tissues from sheep miscarriages in Spain and found a good correlation between the results of the nested PCR and histopathological examinations. On the other hand, Hurtado
et al. (2001) demonstrated that nested PCR may be more sensitive and specific for toxoplasmosis diagnosis in sheep, which is in accordance with the results of this study. However, according to Pereira-Bueno et al. (2004), there are still few studies using PCR for toxoplasmosis diagnosis. Hence, further investigation is necessary to heighten the possibility of arriving at a correct diagnosis of the etiology of miscarriages in sheep. In this study, nested PCR was able to detect parasitic DNA in 80% of the fetal and placental tissue from the five cases of confirmed miscarriages. These figures are higher than those found by Hurtado et al. (2001) and Pereira-Bueno et al. (2004), who reported negative findings using PCR and a histopathological examination, owing to the poor distribution of the parasite in fetal tissue, especially when brain tissue is used for the diagnosis.