Prevalence of <i>Clostridium perfringens</i> Encoding the <i>netF</i> Toxin Gene in Dogs with Acute and Chronic Gastrointestinal Diseases

Several recent studies have reported a significantly greater prevalence of <i>Clostridium perfringens</i> encoding the novel pore-forming <i>netF</i> toxin gene in dogs with acute hemorrhagic diarrhea syndrome. However, the presence of <i>netF</i> in other canine diarrheal diseases remains poorly characterized. This retrospective, cross-sectional study aimed to describe the prevalence and abundance of <i>netF</i>-positive <i>C. perfringens</i> in fecal samples from 352 dogs with acute and chronic gastrointestinal diseases. Dogs were divided into five groups: acute hemorrhagic diarrhea syndrome (AHDS), acute diarrhea (AD), chronic enteropathy (CE), exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI), and healthy controls (HCs). The abundances of <i>C. perfringens</i> 16S rRNA, the <i>C. perfringens</i> enterotoxin gene and the <i>C. perfringens netF</i> gene in fecal samples were analyzed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. In total, 7 of 15 (46.7%) dogs with AHDS, 10 of 75 (13.3%) dogs with AD, 2 of 120 (1.7%) dogs with CE, 1 of 12 (8.3%) dogs with EPI, and 1 of 130 (0.8%) HC dogs tested positive for <i>netF</i>. This study provides further evidence that NetF may be a significant contributor to the etiology of AHDS and potentially to a subset of acute nonhemorrhagic diarrhea cases, while it was only rarely detected in chronic gastrointestinal disease phenotypes.