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Background: Pet dogs are important companion animals that share the environment within households, and play an important role in local community life. In addition, pet dogs also are reservoirs of zoonotic agents, including Rickettsia spp., thus increasing the risk of rickettsial infections in humans. It's meaningful to investigate the epidemiology of rickettsial agents in pet dogs, and make contribute to the surveillance of rickettsioses in human in China. Results: In this study, a total of 496 pet dogs' blood samples and 343 ticks infested in pet dogs were collected, and the presence and prevalence of Rickettsia were determined by amplifying the partial gltA and 17-kDa genes, with an overall positive rate of 8.1 % in blood samples and 14.0 % in tick samples. In addition, the rrs, gltA, groEL, and ompA genes of rickettsial were also recovered to determine the species of Rickettsia detected furtherly. Sequencing blast and phylogenetic analyses revealed the presence of three human pathogenic Rickettsia species (Rickettsia raoultii, Candidatus Rickettsia tarasevichiae and Rickettsia felis) in samples associated with pet dogs. Moreover, all the sequences of Rickettsia that we obtained presented close relationship with others available in GenBank, and Rickettsia raoultii was the most predominant Rickettsia species infected in pet dogs' blood samples or in tick samples. Conclusions: This study provides the molecular epidemiology data about the Rickettsia spp. infection associated with pet dogs in urban areas of Harbin city. Three rickettisae species pathogenic to humans were identified from pet dogs' blood and the infested ticks in urban areas of Harbin city. Considering the intimate relationship between human and pets, these results indicate the potential transmission risk of human rickettisal infections from pet dogs through ectoparasites, and also highlighting that more attention should be paid to rickettsial infection in pet dogs and the infested ticks from the "One health" perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Babesia spp. are important emerging tick-borne protozoan hemoparasites, and pose a great impact on companion animals. Canine babesiosis has been well described worldwide, while felis babesiosis has primarily been reported from South Africa. To the best of our knowledge, Babesia spp. infections in dogs have been well elucidated in pet dog population in China, no report about Babesia spp. infection in cat population in mainland China. Results: In this study, a total of 203 blood samples were collected from pet cats in Shenzhen city, and detected the presence of Babesia spp. with nested-PCR. Sequence comparison based on the 18S rRNA gene and ITS region revealed that three cats (1.48%) were infected with Babesia. vogeli. Notably, the sequences of ITS region obtained in this study shared the highest nucleotide identity with the sequence of B. vogeli strain isolated in cat from Taiwan. Conclusions: This study is the first report about babesiosis in domestic cats, and also provides molecular evidence of Babesia spp. infection in cat in mainland China. The data present in this study suggest B. vogeli may be circulating in cat population in mainland China. Further study to investigate the epidemiology of Babesia infection in cat nationwide is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]