Disease profiles

Epi studies

Epidemiological studies investigating disease dynamics and measures of disease frequency

This is not an agent/disease listed by the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). Geographical distribution can therefore not be mapped directly from any available reports.

The panel to the right shows the distribution of epidemiological studies collected in the literature review. Click on the map to see more information about the studies. The following study context categories are considered:

  • Case reports
  • Passive surveillance (reports of specific surveillance activities following reported cases)
  • Evidence of disease freedom (investigations to confirm disease absence)
  • Observational study (case-control or cohort studies)
  • Active surveillance (active testing of animals and search for cases)
  • Survey (designed sampling and testing of animals)

You can download all data collected through systematic literature review here. Data fields are explained in this read-me file.

The review was last updated in November 2023. The complete list of references is available for download here. If important references to primary studies are missing, contact animal-diseases@efsa.europa.eu. The full review protocol can be downloaded here.

Disease

Animal Health Impact

A summary of the disease in animal hosts is given in the WOAH Technical disease card.

The panel to the right summarizes evidence collected from published studies describing natural infections with this agent (as opposed to experimental infections, summarized in dedicated section).

EFSA conducts regular systematic literature reviews covering studies investigating natural infections with this agent, and published in peer-reviewed literature in English since 1970.

You can download all data collected through systematic literature review here. Data fields are explained in this read-me file.

*The review was last updated in November 2023. The complete list of references is available for download here. If important references to primary studies are missing, contact animal-diseases@efsa.europa.eu. The full review protocol can be downloaded here.

Experimental Inf.

The panel to the right summarizes all evidence collected by EFSA from published experimental infection studies describing the health effects of this pathogen in host animal species. Scroll down through the content.

Summaries of available scientific evidence are provided concerning:

  • Host species
  • Start of clinical signs (incubation period)
  • Duration of clinical signs
  • All diverse types of clinical signs reported in the different host species
  • Case fatality
  • Meta-analysis of the reported duration of observable clinical signs, accounting for censoring in the experimental infection study groups

EFSA conducts regular systematic literature reviews covering all experimental infections published in peer-reviewed literature in English since 1970.

You can download all data collected through systematic literature review here. Data fields are explained in this read-me file.

*The review was last updated in November 2023. The complete list of references is available for download here. If important references to primary studies are missing, contact animal-diseases@efsa.europa.eu. The full review protocol can be downloaded here.

Public Health

The agent impact on public health is unknown except the one case reported in Philippines (Greene CE, 2013).

Agent

Disease agent taxonomy

Phylum: Apicomplexa

Family: Hepatozoidae

Genus: Hepatozoon

Species: Hepatozoon canis

Agent survival outside living hosts

The panel to the right summarizes all evidence collected by EFSA from published experiments on pathogen survival. Scroll down through the content.

Summaries of available scientific evidence are provided concerning:

  • Survival plots indicating the maximum number of days the agent was detected in different matrices under different conditions (temperature)
  • Half-life studies which documented agent viability decay over time under different temperatures
  • Meta-analysis of the reported agent survival period for matrices in which a sufficient number of studies were found

EFSA conducts regular systematic literature reviews covering pathogen survival experiments published in peer-reviewed literature in English since 1970.

You can download all data collected through systematic literature review here. Data fields are explained in this read-me file.

*The review was last updated in November 2023. The complete list of references is available for download here. If important references to primary studies are missing, contact animal-diseases@efsa.europa.eu. The full review protocol can be downloaded here.

Transmission

The panel to the right summarizes all evidence collected by EFSA from published experimental infection studies describing host infectiousness. Scroll down through the content.

Summaries of available scientific evidence are provided concerning:

  • Evidence of Host-host transmission
  • Evidence of transplacentary transmission
  • Meta-analysis of the reported duration of the infectious period, accounting for censoring in the experimental infection study groups
  • Data for all animal matrices in which agent presence was demonstrated.

EFSA conducts regular systematic literature reviews covering all experimental infections published in peer-reviewed literature in English since 1970.

You can download all data collected through systematic literature review here. Data fields are explained in this read-me file.

*The review was last updated in November 2023. The complete list of references is available for download here. If important references to primary studies are missing, contact animal-diseases@efsa.europa.eu. The full review protocol can be downloaded here.

Diagnosis

There are no WOAH- recommended standard tests for Hepatozoon.

EFSA conducts regular systematic literature reviews covering peer-reviewed literature in English since 1970, covering diagnostic tests approved for use in the European Union (EU).

Data were collected from all evaluations of performance of those tests which provided sensitivity or specificity (or enough data to estimate those needed to be provided). You can browse through the data collected scrolling the panel to the right.

We have chosen not to aggregate and summarize the results because the study conditions can vary greatly. Instead, we present the results for all the articles retrieved from the literature individually, grouped by type of test, diagnostic target and, when relevant, animal species.

You can download all data collected through systematic literature review here. Data fields are explained in this read-me file.

The review was last updated in November 2023. The complete list of references is available for download here. If important references to primary studies are missing, contact animal-diseases@efsa.europa.eu. The full review protocol can be downloaded here.

Vectors

Know vectors
  • Kingdom: Animalia
  • Phylum: Arthropoda
  • Class: Arachnida
  • Order: Acarina
  • Family: hard ticks (Ixodidae)
  • Genus: Rhipicephalus
  • Species: Rhipicephalus sanguineus
  • Common name: Brown dog tick

The map on the right shows the reported presence of specific vector species in primary sources.

Visit the VectorNet resources directly for further information on disease vectors, including expert opinion

Vector control

The panel to the right summarizes all evidence collected by EFSA from published studies of the efficacy of various substances available for TICK control. Scroll down through the content.

Summaries of available scientific evidence are provided concerning:

  • The efficacy of various substances on vector mortality, when applied to animal hosts by different routes (modes of treatment)
  • The efficacy of various substances in experiments where vectors were directly exposed

Studies that presented substance effects through outcomes other than vector mortality (for instance infestation prevention)

EFSA conducts regular systematic literature reviews covering vector control studies (for selected vectors: midges, mosqtuitoes, sandflies and ticks) published in peer-reviewed literature in English since 1970.

You can download all data collected through systematic literature review here. Data fields are explained in this read-me file.

*The review was last updated in January 2018. The complete list of references is available for download here. If important references to primary studies are missing, contact animal-diseases@efsa.europa.eu. The full review protocol can be downloaded here.

Vaccination

EFSA conducts regular systematic literature reviews (SLR) covering all vaccine efficacy studies published in peer-reviewed literature in English since 1970, when evaluating vaccines approved for use in the European Union.

No vaccine reports were found up until the latest SLR. The next update is planned for 2024.

You can download all data collected through systematic literature review here, for pathogens which have available vaccines. Data fields are explained in this read-me file.

*The review was last updated in January 2018. The complete list of references is available for download here. If important references to primary studies are missing, contact animal-diseases@efsa.europa.eu. The full review protocol can be downloaded here.

Picture credit: Public domain image from maxpixel.net

Treatments

The panel to the right summarizes all evidence collected by EFSA from published treatment efficacy studies. When available, evidence was collected from two main types of studies:

  • those in which the animals were subjected to a specific Pharmaceutical treatment, and the efficacy of the treatment in preventing infections in the treated group is reported in comparison to a control group;
  • and those in which a vector control substance (insecticide)t was used, and its effect in preventing infections in hosts is reported.

For both types of studies the panel to the right presents reported results regarding:

  • Efficacy: efficacy is measured as 1-(percentage infection in the treated group/percentage infection in the control group)
  • Titer of neutralizing antibodies
  • Percentage of positive animals (after exposire to the agent)
  • Mortality

EFSA conducts regular systematic literature reviews covering treatment efficacy studies published in peer-reviewed literature in English since 1970, when substances used for treatment are approved for use in the European Union.

You can download all data collected through systematic literature review here. Data fields are explained in this read-me file.

*The review was last updated in January 2018. The complete list of references is available for download here. If important references to primary studies are missing, contact animal-diseases@efsa.europa.eu. The full review protocol can be downloaded here.

Legislation

No specific measures are laid down in the EU legislation for hepat outbreak control. The EU does not apply any specific trade restrictions to prevent import of hepat. The disease is not officially notifiable.

EFSA Journal
Consult the available risk assessments in full through the links below:

Risk Assessments

EFSA regularly carries out risk assessments to support risk managers with their decision making on the prevention and control of diseases. Risk assessments of relevance for this disease are listed in the right panel.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

The CoVetLab consortium has been responsible for the systematic literature reviews since 2015, and has delivered story maps to EFSA since 2021. Partners are: Swedish National Veterinary Institute (SVA, Sweden); Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR, The Netherlands); Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA; UK) and the University of Surrey (UK).

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References

The list of references displayed in this storymap is available on the right panel.

You can also download the complete list of references for each of the seven specific knowledge domains for which EFSA carries out systematic literature reviews regularly (living reviews):