Incidence of foot and mouth disease outbreaks in Ilesha Baruba, Kwara State-Nigeria

Sero-diagnostic assay using NS-Blocking ELISA kit (PRIOCHECKR) was conducted to ascertain the incidence of Bovine Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreaks in three Fulani camps located at Bode/ Babanne and Sinawu/Tumbunya wards in Ilesha baruba district of kwara state. This study identified 842 FMD infected cattle based on history and clinical sign from a total of 4,248 cattle. Randomly obtained sera from ninety blood samples collected across the herds were screened. This study revealed overall incidence of 18.9% with 19.8% morbidity and 0.92% mortality especially in calves. Sero-positivity amongst representative screened cattle showed 71.1% occurrence. However, demographic factors (age, breed and sex) indicated more young (54.7%) white Fulani (46.9%) cows (62.5%) were positive to FMD, although not significant (P>0.05) by chi square analysis. Outbreak re-occurrence within the three herds demonstrated characteristic absence of immunity between infections of FMD virus serotypes which enhances cattle susceptibility to another serotype while or having recovered from an existing infection due to another serotype. NSP-ELISA confirmed these infected cattle as non-vaccinated which have being exposed to infection <40> days especially amongst young white Fulani cows as observed. This reported incidence confirmed increasing FMD outbreaks as the serotypes responsible for this sero-positivity is needed to be ascertained if effective control effort is to be instituted.Keywords: Incidence, FMD, outbreaks, Ilesha Baruba LG

Infectious bursal disease: evaluation of pathogenicity of commercial vaccines from Brazil in specific pathogen free chichens

Infectious Bursal Disease (IBD) is a chicken disease economically important for the poultry industry in function of the immune depression that it causes. Disease control is made with different vaccines and vaccination programs. In present work, the pathogenicity of 3 intermediate vaccines (I1, I2 and I3), 2 intermediate more pathogenic (IP1 and IP2) and 3 vaccines containing strong virus (F1, F2 and F3) was evaluated. Birds vaccinated with IP1, IP2, F1, F2 and F3 showed significantly lower bursa size in relation to control animals and animals vaccinated with I1, I2 and I3. On the other hand, vaccines I1 and I3 induced antibody titers higher than the control and lower than I2, IP1, IP2, F1, F2 and F3. Histological scores showed that vaccines I1, I2 and I3 induced similar injury degree, although I2 and I3 were not different from the control, whereas I1 was slightly different. Strong vaccines induced more pronounced lesions than the other tested vaccines. These findings suggest that strong vaccines are able to cause severe bursal injuries. However, bursometry and relative weight of the bursa of Fabricius were considered inadequate to evaluate vaccine pathogenicity. Moreover, strong vaccines induced higher antibody titers than the other vaccines, although some intermediate vaccines induced similar titers

Peste des Petits Ruminants

Heartwater (or cowdriosis) is a tick-borne disease caused by Ehrlichia ruminantium, an obligatory intracellular bacterium of the order Rickettsiales, transmitted by several ticks of the genus Amblyomma. The organism is genetically highly variable which prevented until now the development of efficient vaccines. The disease is enzootic in sub-Sahelian Africa and in some Caribbean islands. It affects domestic and wild ruminants, the susceptibility to cowdriosis varying greatly between breeds and species: African wildlife shows mainly asymptomatic infections; local cattle breeds are generally protected due to enzootic stability; and introduced cattle breeds and small ruminants, even in enzootic regions, are usually susceptible to heartwater and can suffer high mortality rates. Cowdriosis is characterized by a sudden and acute fever followed by nervous, respiratory, and gastrointestinal symptoms and by hydrothorax and hydropericardium during postmortem examination. In West Africa, the only vector is Amblyomma variegatum, present in areas where pluviometry is higher than 500 mm. Therefore, animals of a high proportion of the Sahelian region are usually not infested by the tick and not infected by the bacterium. They are thus susceptible when introduced in southern parts of the Sahel or in the subhumid neighboring areas of the West African countries, for example during transhumance. Tetracyclines are effective drugs to treat heartwater when administered before occurrence of the nervous symptoms. Various vaccines have been tested, and are still developed, but, up to now, none of them showed enough effectiveness against all the field strains of E. ruminantium to allow its marketing. Prevention is therefore mainly achieved by drastic vector control or, on the contrary, acquisition of enzootic stability following tick infestation combined with tetracycline treatment as soon as hyperthermia occurs