Abstract
The aim of this systematic review was to identify articles on prevalence
of leptospirosis in stray and sheltered dogs worldwide and access the
methodological quality of the recovered papers. Six databases (CABI,
Cochrane, Pubmed, Scielo, Scopus and Web of Science) were searched,
without restriction on year or location where the studies were
performed. The search recovered 476 articles and 60 were selected for
analysis according to quality criteria. None of the selected articles
showed a complete explanation for the sample size adopted (probabilistic
sampling), leading to the impossibility of recalculation of
leptospirosis prevalence for stray or sheltered dogs. Among the analyzed
papers 43.33% (26/60) showed five of the ten quality criteria analyzed,
16.67% (10/60) three, 15.00% (9/60) four, 10.00% (6/60) six, 6.67%
(4/60) eight, only 5.00% (3/60) showed nine of the ten criteria
analyzed, whereas two papers showed two [1.67% (1/60)] and seven
[1.67% (1/60)] of the ten criteria assessed. The majority of the
papers were published in the Americas [45.00% (27/60)] and in the
last sixteen years (2003 to 2019) [81.67% (49/60)], and most of the
sampled dogs were stray dogs [65.00% (39/60)]. The leptospirosis
diagnostic test used more frequently was Micro Agglutination Test (MAT)
[78.33% (47/60)] followed by polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)
[23.33% (14/60)], whereas the most common serovars identified were
Canicola [71.43% (35/49)], Icterohaemohrragiae [65.31%
(32/49)], Grippotyphosa [40.82% (20/49)] and Pomona [40.82%
(20/49)]. In conclusion, our results showed that Leptospira spp. is
present in stray and sheltered dogs worldwide, but the complete
comprehension of the prevalence of leptospirosis in these populations
could not be achieved due to the low methodologic quality of the
recovered studies about leptospirosis in stray and sheltered dogs.