Coxiella burnetii is a causative agent of Q-fever, a widespread zoonosis. The effective adaptation of C. burnetii to intracellular existence is in contrast with its ability to survive in the environment outside the host cells and its resistance to chemical and physical agents. Besides nutrients and minerals, soil is aggregate of number of pathogens. Many of those organisms are of zoontoic importance and have significant threat to public health. One of these is Coxiella burnetii that has been reported from other countries including the neighboring to Pakistan. Its occurrence in soil, clinical significance and importance to human and animal health has been reported; nevertheless nothing is known of C. burnetii in Pakistan particularly in rural setup where human and animals are in close proximity to each other as well as the fact that how different risk factors can be implicated in its spread and survival in the soil. PCR helps to identify the organism on the basis of its genome and it is highly preferable over other conventional detection assays. Soil borne C. burnetii has not shown any association with different risk factors. The factors include presence or absence of pathogens with or without animal interaction, distance from animal market, main road, canal, animal and human density in a village under study. PCR technique was used to identify C. burnetii in the soils of Faisalabad and Gujranwala district. Soil samples (n= 730) were collected from each village of the both districts and processed for genome extraction using commercial soil DNA extraction kit. The extracted DNA from the soil samples was run further for PCR analysis of transposase IS1111a followed by standard gel electrophoresis technique. Only 6 (0.82%) samples were positive out of 730. Furthermore pathogens prevalence was geographically mapped in relation to roads, canals,
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rivers, drains, animal and human population to determine the risk areas according to intensity of identified pathogens for both districts. Odd Ratio was calculated to access the association in terms of absence or presence of pathogens with particular risk factors, which did not show any kind of association between pathogen and risk factors. The phylogenetic analysis of C. burnetii shows different convergence percentage with the isolates of worldwide i.e., Namibia (99.53%), Brazil (100%), Taiwan (99.53%), India (99.07%).
Study was contributed to understand about the previously unrevealed prevalence of C. burnetii in soil of district Gujranwala and Faisalabad together with risk factor analysis implicating possible health significance as well as survival in the soil.