Occurrence of Cryptosporidium sp. in snakes in Japan.

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of Cryptosporidium in snakes in Japan. Fecal samples or intestinal contents of 469 snakes, consisting of five species, were analyzed and Cryptosporidium oocysts were detected only from the Japanese grass snake Rhabdophis tigrinus. The mean prevalence of Cryptosporidium sp. in Japanese grass snakes was approximately 26% in the region studied. Histopathological observations revealed that the organism caused proliferative enteritis in the small intestine. Sequence analysis of a fragment of the small subunit rRNA gene has shown that the partial sequence of Cryptosporidium sp. isolated from the snakes was identical to that of the Cryptosporidium snake genotype W11 from New Guinea viper boa.