Abstract

Prabhusaran Nagarajan*, Natarajaseenivasan Kalimuthusamy and Joseph Pushpa Innocent Danialas

ABSTRACT

Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease that accidentally infects the humans when they exposed to contaminated environment including soil. While the first author visiting the park at Tiruchirapalli, the gardener is working in the soil for planting, at that time he handled the dead rat in his hand and threw it in the dust bin without any personal protective equipment. Thus, the objective was determined to assess the presence of leptospires in the gardeners by isolation, serology and simple molecular analysis in order to understand and prove the environmental and occupational risk of acquiring leptospirosis. A battery of 47 gardeners from various levels (from General Park to school gardens) and the same number of age and gender matched control subjects without gardening occupation in Tiruchirapalli were included. Blood samples of all the gardeners and control were inoculated in EMJH semisolid medium and serology including ELISA and MAT were performed to assess the seroprevalence. Further 30 MAT positive samples were examined for the presence of leptospiral DNA using specific primers for 16S rRNA gene. Among the 47 gardeners’ and control samples, 26 and 4 were found to be positively confirmed for MAT serology respectively. Dinger’s ring and culture positive were observed among 4 gardener blood samples and predominantly identified as Leptospira interrogans serovar Grippotyphosa. Out of 30 MAT positive samples, 12 samples were found to be PCR positive with the dominating serovar of Grippotyphosa, revealing the fragment of 275bp after gel electrophoresis. This study highlighted as the first case control study of leptospiral exposure among gardeners and also supported the association of leptospiral exposure with the occupation. Further studies required to confirm the lack of this association. All the gardeners are taught some awareness about the infection and its sources.