Canine hepatozoonosis and monocytic ehrlichiosis
are two tick-borne diseases caused by the intracellular
pathogens Hepatozoon canis and Ehrlichia canis, respectively,
and transmitted by the brown dog tick Rhipicephalus
sanguineus (Baneth et al., 2007; Harrus and Waner,
2011). E. canis is a rickettsia that infects monocytes and
macrophages, whereas H. canis is an apicomplexan protozoon
that infects neutrophils and monocytes. Although
concurrent infection of animals with two or more vectorborne
pathogens is relatively common (Tabar et al., 2013;
Rojas et al., 2014), descriptions of invasion and co-infection
of the same blood cell with two vector-borne intracellular
pathogens are rare, and provoke questions on the interactions
between the pathogens and the permissiveness of
host cells to co-infection. This report describes infection of