Q fever seroprevalence in small ruminants in Spain is found to be close to 50%

Q fever is a multi-host zoonotic disease of interest to animal and public health, caused by the Coxiella burnetii bacterium, with ruminants being its main reservoirs. In fact, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has recently included Q fever among the priorities for establishing a coordinated surveillance system. Although Spain is the European Union country with the highest human incidence of the disease, updated data on Coxiella burnetii in ruminants remains limited. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Córdoba and the Carlos III Health Institute, among others, has published a study that has determined the seroprevalence and identified risk factors for exposure to Coxiella burnetii in domestic ruminants (390 sheep and 390 goats) and wild ruminants (390 red deer, 110 mouflons and 105 mountain goats) in the Mediterranean ecosystems of southern Spain. Thus, the researchers collected a total of 780 serum samples from small ruminants and 605 sera from wild ruminants ...