James Conlan was funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research and a Murdoch University Research Studentship (MURS) award. this website Paul Newton is funded by the Wellcome Trust of Great Britain. “
“Several trichomonad species of the phylum Parabasala are well-known pathogens in veterinary medicine. In cats two trichomonad species have received scientific attention, Tritrichomonas foetus (family Tritrichomonadidae) and Pentatrichomonas hominis (family Trichomonadidae) ( Cepicka et al., 2010). P. hominis ( Honigberg et al., 1968) is known to inhabit the digestive tract, mainly the large intestine, of several vertebrates such as humans, dogs, monkeys, guinea pigs

and cats ( Wenrich, 1944 and Jongwutiwes et al., 2000). In former studies P. hominis was erroneously considered to be the causative agent of the chronic large-bowel diarrhea in cats ( Romatowski, 1996, Gookin et al., 1999 and Romatowski, BKM120 purchase 2000). After experimental induction of transient diarrhea in specific pathogen free cats by T. foetus it became unanimously

accepted that the disease was due to T. foetus and not P. hominis ( Gookin et al., 2001). T. foetus is mainly known as the causative agent of bovine trichomonosis ( Parsonson et al., 1976), a venereal disease in heifers. It could be demonstrated that cattle are susceptible to infection with T. foetus isolated from cats and vice versa causing comparable lesions ( Stockdale et al., 2007 and Stockdale et al., 2008). A recent study suggested the recognition of genetically distinct ‘cattle genotype’ and ‘cat genotype’ of T. foetus ( Šlapeta et al., 2010).

Furthermore, T. foetus was found to be the same species as Tritrichomonas suis ( Lun et al., 2005), Rolziracetam and was shown to be a facultative pathogen in the large intestine of pigs ( Mostegl et al., 2011). In cats, T. foetus colonizes the ileum, caecum and colon in close proximity to the mucosal surface ( Yaeger and Gookin, 2005). Although the presence of T. foetus in the feline reproductive tract is regarded as unlikely ( Gray et al., 2010), there is a single report of a natural T. foetus infection in the feline uterus ( Dahlgren et al., 2007). Cats affected with T. foetus were usually less than 12 months of age with only single cases ranging up to 13 years of age ( Gookin et al., 1999, Gunn-Moore et al., 2007 and Stockdale et al., 2009), lived in multi-cat households, and were predominantly pure-bred cats ( Gookin et al., 1999 and Gookin et al., 2004). Infections of cats with T. foetus were first described in the USA ( Gookin et al., 1999), but several reports followed from other countries, such as the UK ( Mardell and Sparkes, 2006 and Gunn-Moore et al., 2007), Germany ( Gookin et al., 2003b and Schrey et al., 2009), Switzerland ( Frey et al.