Dirofilaria immitis and D. repens are mosquito-borne nematodes, primarily infecting dogs, but also other species of carnivores and even humans. Given their impact on animal and human health, the transmission of these filarioids has been widely studied. The microfilariaemia has been shown to have a circadian variation for both Dirofilaria species infecting dogs. Due to methodological difficulties, the periodicity was only studied using venous blood samples, while the mosquitoes feed, in fact, on capillary blood. In this context, the present study aimed to test the feasibility of using triatomine bugs for the collection of capillary blood and to comparatively evaluate the level of microfilariaemia and its circadian variation in capillary blood vs. peripheral venous blood in a dog naturally co-infected with D. immitis and D. repens. The results showed a feeding success of 50%, with variations in the blood meal volume that the bugs ingested. The relative values of microfilariaemia (mf/bug) were strongly correlated with the volume of blood recovered: the more blood recovered from each bug, the higher values of microfilariaemia in the evening samples while the opposite results were obtained for the morning samples. The counting of microfilariae revealed a dominance of D. immitis in all the samples, but with significantly higher microfilariaemia in the venous blood. Meanwhile, for D. repens, the situation was opposite, with higher counts in the capillary blood samples. Our study showed that triatomine bugs can be used as a model for the collection and study of microfilariaemia in the capillary blood in mammals.

• Klíčová slova
• Co-infection, Dirofilaria, Periodicity, Triatomine bug,
• MeSH
• cirkadiánní rytmus MeSH
• Dirofilaria immitis izolace a purifikace   fyziologie   MeSH
• Dirofilaria repens izolace a purifikace   fyziologie   MeSH
• dirofilarióza diagnóza   parazitologie   MeSH
• kapiláry parazitologie   MeSH
• koinfekce diagnóza   parazitologie   veterinární   MeSH
• mikrofilárie klasifikace   izolace a purifikace   MeSH
• nemoci psů diagnóza   parazitologie   MeSH
• odběr vzorku krve metody   veterinární   MeSH
• parazitemie diagnóza   parazitologie   veterinární   MeSH
• psi MeSH
• studie proveditelnosti MeSH
• Triatominae * MeSH
• vény parazitologie   MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Check Tag
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• psi MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH