Detection of a new pathogenic Babesia microti-like species in dogs.

Small babesiae in dogs are generally considered to belong to Babesia gibsoni. Here we describe the genotypic characterisation of small piroplasms found in the blood of a dog which suffered from clinical babesiosis. Pairwise identities as well as distance, parsimony and maximum likelihood analyses of the 18S rDNA clearly demonstrated that this isolate was only distantly related to the other canine piroplasms characterised genetically so far, including B. gibsoni. It was more closely related to B. microti, B. rodhaini, and Theileria equi. It is concluded that the small canine piroplasms described in this study represent a hitherto unknown species and that the fauna of piroplasms occurring in dogs is more diverse than assumed so far.