Differential diagnosis of dog hookworms based on PCR-RFLP from the ITS region of their rDNA

Species of Ancylostoma infecting dogs and sometimes humans are sympatric in many parts of the world. The establishment of a specific molecular diagnostic tool is important, not only to refine information for epidemiological studies, but also to evaluate the efficacy of vaccine programmes and assist in the development of specific drug treatments. The ITS region from 20 specimens of A. braziliense, collected from three separate geographical areas of Brazil, and from 10 specimens of A. caninum, collected from the same area in Brazil were sequenced and analyzed. Alignment of sequences showed that this gene is highly conserved. The intraspecific polymorphism for both species was less then 1%, whereas the interspecific polymorphism was 6.2, 7.3 and 9.4% between A. ceylanicum and A. braziliense; A. caninum and A. ceylanicum and A. ceylanicum and A. braziliense, respectively. Among the three species it was 12.3%. This revealed the ITS region as highly conserved and consequently a good molecular marker for diagnostic studies. In this work, four restriction enzymes were used in a PCR-RFLP using the ITS region of rDNA, to establish a differential diagnosis which discriminates between three Ancylostoma species, A. braziliense, A. caninum and A. ceylanicum. The best pattern was given by the HinfI enzyme, which produced different fragment sizes for each of the three species. Furthermore, the diagnostic tool differentiates DNA extracted directly from faeces of Ancylostoma-infected dogs.