Nanophyetus salmincola, vector of the salmon poisoning disease agent Neorickettsia helminthoeca, harbors a second pathogenic Neorickettsia species

The trematode Nanophyetus salmincola is known as the carrier of Neorickettsia helminthoeca, an obligate intracellular endosymbiotic bacterium that causes salmon poisoning disease (SPD), a fatal disease of dogs. The bacteria are maintained through the complex life cycle of N. salmincola that involves snails Juga plicifera as the first intermediate host, salmonid fishes as the second intermediate host and fish-eating mammals as definitive hosts. N. salmincola was also found to harbor a second species of Neorickettsia that causes the Elokomin fluke fever disease (EFF) which has clinical signs similar to SPD in bears, but only low grade illness in dogs. The EFF agent has not been sequenced. In this study we identified N. salmincola as the vector of yet additional species of Neorickettsia known as Stellanchasmus falcatu (SF) agent using DNA sequencing.