It was reported that the best and the most reliable method for detection of the causative agent in horses was microscopic examination, but that the chance of detect the cause in subclinical infections decreased
1. In this study, no parasites were detected in microscopic preparations. This situation is in accordance with the ideas suggested by some investigators
5-9.
All the studies in Turkey involved microscopic examination of blood microscopic slides 2,10-14. It is known that use of serological tests are common in especially detection of carrier horses, besides blood microscopic slides for diagnosis of piroplasmosis in single clawed animals 9,15,16. B. equi infections are reported to be more common in the world, compared to B. caballi infections 1. Some investigators 9, have used IFAT and CFT in diagnosis of Babesia infections in horses. Although they have detected seronegativity by CFT on from 2-3 months following experimental infections, they have reported that these horses were still positive when they were studied by IFAT. Furthermore, they have observed that B. equi antibodies remained in high titer by IFAT and CFT, compared to B. caballi antibodies.
In an IFAT study in Mongolia, 88.2% positivity for B.equi, and 84.5% positivity for B.caballi was observed 7. In the study with 23 horses which appeared healthy in Argentina, all were detected to carry specific antibodies for B. equi, and 18 of them were found to be seropositive for B. equi by CFT 8. In Israel, 361 sera samples collected from 361 horses were examined by IFAT, and one third of the horses were observed to be seropositive for B. equi 18.
In this study, although prevalence of antibodies specific to B. equi was detected to be 16 (20.5%) and that for B. caballi detected to be 2 (2.5%) by IFAT, and although CFT revealed prevalence of antibodies specific to B. equi to be 14 (18%) and that for B. caballi to be 0 (0%) in Malatya. No sera from Elazığ province showed seropositivity for the agents examined microscopically IFAT and CFT.
Both serological methods indicated that B. equi was more prevalent than B. caballi in Malatya province.
Some investigators 5,6,9,15-17 have reported that, starting from 2-3 months following the acute infection, particularly the antibodies against B. caballi became undetectable by CFT, but that these horses remained positive by IFAT for a long period. This study showed that there was no difference between IFAT and CFT results .
This result was not supported by earlier studies 6,7,9,15-17.
All the studies on horses performed in Turkey to date were carried out solely by the microscopical diagnosis method, and no other studies which applied microscopic examination and serological tests together existed. As this study was the first in Turkey, it was evaluated according to the results of microscopic examinations performed before. When the data we acquired as a result of serological tests in this study were compared with the results from other microscopic investigations 2,10,12-14, IFAT and CFT findings revealed that subclinical and chronic infections were relatively more prevalent.
