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Canine babesiosis has been well described worldwide, while felis babesiosis has primarily been reported from South Africa. To the best of our knowledge,<jats:italic>Babesia<\/jats:italic>spp. infections in dogs have been well elucidated in pet dog population in China, no report about<jats:italic>Babesia<\/jats:italic>spp. infection in cat population in mainland China.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results<\/jats:title><jats:p>In this study, a total of 203 blood samples were collected from pet cats in Shenzhen city, and detected the presence of<jats:italic>Babesia<\/jats:italic>spp. with nested-PCR. Sequence comparison based on the 18S rRNA gene and ITS region revealed that three cats (1.48%) were infected with<jats:italic>Babesia<\/jats:italic>.<jats:italic>vogeli<\/jats:italic>. Notably, the sequences of ITS region obtained in this study shared the highest nucleotide identity with the sequence of<jats:italic>B<\/jats:italic>.<jats:italic>vogeli<\/jats:italic>strain isolated in cat from Taiwan.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title><jats:p>This study is the first report about babesiosis in domestic cats, and also provides molecular evidence of<jats:italic>Babesia<\/jats:italic>spp. infection in cat in mainland China. The data present in this study suggest<jats:italic>B<\/jats:italic>.<jats:italic>vogeli<\/jats:italic>may be circulating in cat population in mainland China. Further study to investigate the epidemiology of<jats:italic>Babesia<\/jats:italic>infection in cat nationwide is warranted.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12917-019-2214-0","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,12,30]],"date-time":"2019-12-30T22:02:51Z","timestamp":1577743371000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":15,"title":["Molecular evidence of Babesia in pet cats in mainland China"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"15","author":[{"given":"Xue-Lian","family":"Zhang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xiao-Wen","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wen-Jun","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hui-Lan","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shu-Jian","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9548-3831","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jian-Wei","family":"Shao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,12,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"2214_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1788","DOI":"10.1016\/j.meegid.2012.07.004","volume":"12","author":"L Schnittger","year":"2012","unstructured":"Schnittger L, Rodriguez AE, Florin-Christensen M, Morrison DA. 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All pet cats were handled in accordance with the Animal Ethics Procedures and Guidelines of the People\u2019s Republic of China. All owners of the pet cats gave verbal permission for the samples collection, and the Research Ethics Committee of the College of Life Science and Engineering, Foshan University approved this procedure. All sample collection processes were conducted by local authorities and veterinarians.","order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"Not applicable.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}},{"value":"The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this article.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}}],"article-number":"476"}}