Abstract

Q fever is a zoonotic disease caused by the rickettsial organism Coxiella burnetii, the objective of this study was to determine the prevalence rate of C. burnetii in bulk milk samples from dairy goat herds in Fars, Ghom, Kerman, Khuzestan and Yazdprovinces, Iran. In the present study, 296 bulk milk samples from 89 dairy goat herds were tested for C. burnetii using a nested PCR assay. The animals which their milk samples collected for this study were clinically healthy. In total, 6 of 296 (2.0%) goat milk samples were positive; the positive samples originated from 4 of 22 (18.2%) dairy herds in Fars, 1 of 24 (4.2%) dairy herds in Khuzestan and 1 of 18 (5.5%) dairy herds in Yazd. All 76 goat bulk milk samples from 25 goat breeding farms collected in Ghom and Kerman provinces were negative, although no extensive prevalence study was undertaken, the results of this study indicate those clinically healthy dairy goats are important sources of C. burnetii infection in Iran.

Key words: Coxiella burnetii, PCR, milk, goat, Iran.