Chlamydia (Chlamydophila) pneumoniae in animals: a review

Abstract

An important discovery in the last couple of years is that humans are not the only natural hosts with which C. pneumoniae is the primary cause for the disease. Successively, the C. pneumoniae strain was isolated from horses, koala bears affected by ocular and genital infection, Australian and African frogs, from a Tanzanian chameleon, a green sea turtle living in the Cayman Islands, an iguana, puff adders and a Burmese python. All of the animals in which the C. pneumoniae was confirmed, were suffering from some form of illness that is also typical in humans when affected by this chlamydial species. All strains also showed a high similarity with the human C. pneumoniae strain (up to 100%).