Producer and Practitioner Assisted Research: Suckling Beef Calf Pneumonia

In an effort to better define the causes and costs of respiratory disease in suckling beef calves, we need your help! Faculty members at the ISU College of Veterinary Medicine are looking for calves that are showing evidence of respiratory disease prior to weaning. We would like to work with you and your local veterinarian to collect a set of samples from the sick calf and two normal herdmates. We are sampling both sick and normal calves to be able to tell the difference in pathogen load between the two groups

Preventing Perinatal Beef Calf Mortality

Perinatal calf mortality (PCM) refers to death loss from the time of calving through the first month of life. Previous USDA estimates put this loss at over 2.7 million calves ($976 million) annually, with nearly 70 percent coming within four days of calving. Financial estimates from a 1993 Colorado State University study put the cost of sick and dead calves at nearly$12.50 per weaned calf. This includes 35 pounds of lost weaning weight from each sick calf

Detection of Volatile Compounds Emitted from Nasal Secretions and Serum: Towards Non-Invasive Identification of Diseased Cattle Biomarkers

Non-invasive diagnostics and finding biomarkers of disease in humans have been a very active research area. Some of the analytical technologies used for finding biomarkers of human disease are finding their use in livestock. Non-invasive sample collection from diseased cattle using breath and headspace of fecal samples have been reported. In this work, we explore the use of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from bovine nasal secretions and serum for finding biomarkers for bovine respiratory disease (BRD). One hundred nasal swabs and 100 serum samples (n = 50 for both ‘sick’ and ‘healthy’) were collected at the time of treatment for suspected BRD. Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) was used to collect headspace samples that were analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). It was possible to separate sick cattle using non-invasive analyses of nasal swabs and also serum samples by analyzing and comparing volatiles emitted from each group of samples. Four volatile compounds were found to be statistically significantly different between ‘sick’ and ‘normal’ cattle nasal swabs samples. Five volatile compounds were found to be significantly different between ‘sick’ and ‘normal’ cattle serum samples, with phenol being the common marker. Future studies are warranted to improve the extraction efficiency targeting VOCs preliminarily identified in this study. These findings bring us closer to the long-term goal of real-time, animal-side detection and separation of sick cattle

Association between antimicrobial drug class for treatment and retreatment of bovine respiratory disease (BRD) and frequency of resistant BRD pathogen isolation from veterinary diagnostic laboratory samples

Although 90% of BRD relapses are reported to receive retreatment with a different class of antimicrobial, studies examining the impact of antimicrobial selection (i.e. bactericidal or bacteriostatic) on retreatment outcomes and the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are deficient in the published literature. This survey was conducted to determine the association between antimicrobial class selection for treatment and retreatment of BRD relapses on antimicrobial susceptibility of Mannheimia haemolytica, Pasteurella multocida, and Histophilus somni. Pathogens were isolated from samples submitted to the Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory from January 2013 to December 2015. A total of 781 isolates with corresponding animal case histories, including treatment protocols, were included in the analysis. Original susceptibility testing of these isolates for ceftiofur, danofloxacin, enrofloxacin, florfenicol, oxytetracycline, spectinomycin, tilmicosin, and tulathromycin was performed using Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines. Data were analyzed using a Bayesian approach to evaluate whether retreatment with antimicrobials of different mechanistic classes (bactericidal or bacteriostatic) increased the probability of resistant BRD pathogen isolation in calves. The posterior distribution we calculated suggests that an increased number of treatments is associated with a greater probability of isolates resistant to at least one antimicrobial. Furthermore, the frequency of resistant BRD bacterial isolates was greater with retreatment using antimicrobials of different mechanistic classes than retreatment with the same class. Specifically, treatment protocols using a bacteriostatic drug first followed by retreatment with a bactericidal drug were associated with a higher frequency of resistant BRD pathogen isolation. In particular, first treatment with tulathromycin (bacteriostatic) followed by ceftiofur (bactericidal) was associated with the highest probability of resistant M. haemolytica among all antimicrobial combinations. These observations suggest that consideration should be given to antimicrobial pharmacodynamics when selecting drugs for retreatment of BRD. However, prospective studies are needed to determine the clinical relevance to antimicrobial stewardship programs in livestock production systems

Impact of Oral Meloxicam on Circulating Physiological Biomarkers of Stress and Inflammation in Beef Steers After Long Distance Transportation

We hypothesized that meloxicam administration to beef steers before shipping may be effective at reducing the impact of transportation on stress biomarkers. Circulating physiological biomarkers of stress were analyzed in a transportation trial between a meloxicam treatment group and a placebo treatment group. There were significant differences in stress biomarkers between treatment groups following transport. This suggests that there may be practical benefits for the use of long-acting non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), specifically meloxicam, to mitigate the negative effect of transport on cattle physiology

Producer and Practitioner Assisted Research: Suckling Beef Calf Pneumonia

In an effort to better define the causes and costs of respiratory disease in suckling beef calves, we need your help! Faculty members at the ISU College of Veterinary Medicine are looking for calves that are showing evidence of respiratory disease prior to weaning. We would like to work with you and your local veterinarian to collect a set of samples from the sick calf and two normal herdmates. We are sampling both sick and normal calves to be able to tell the difference in pathogen load between the two groups.</p

Preventing Perinatal Beef Calf Mortality

Perinatal calf mortality (PCM) refers to death loss from the time of calving through the first month of life. Previous USDA estimates put this loss at over 2.7 million calves ($976 million) annually, with nearly 70 percent coming within four days of calving. Financial estimates from a 1993 Colorado State University study put the cost of sick and dead calves at nearly$12.50 per weaned calf. This includes 35 pounds of lost weaning weight from each sick calf.</p

Analytical approaches for detection of breath VOC biomarkers of cattle diseases -A review

Diagnosis of diseases in cattle at early stages is of significance both economically and clinically. Non-invasive diagnostic samples such as breath are preferred since they cause minimum inconvenience or pain to the animals. In this review, different sampling devices, sample preparation techniques, instrumentation, and statistical analysis approaches that have been designed and tested are described and compared in terms of their applicability in the diagnosis of common cattle diseases. The sample preparation techniques used include solid-phase microextraction (SPME), sorbent extraction, and needle trap device (NTD). The collected volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are determined using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and the electronic nose (e-nose) technology. The majority of studies are focused on the diagnosis of ketosis and bovine respiratory disease (BRD). The common diseases and potential biomarkers are summarized and discussed. Due to the differences in the number of subjects and the type of animals used in different studies, the results are not consistent. Acetone, although detected in almost all studies and subjects, has elevated concentrations in cattle suffering from ketosis. The results of currently available studies were not indicative of specific biomarkers for BRD, and further investigation is required. The current studies have shortcomings in regards to defining useful VOC profiles, the impact on animal welfare, and the practical application at the producer level. While the presented approaches are promising, more controlled, standardized clinical studies need to be conducted before breath analysis can be routinely performed on cattle.This article is published as Haddadi, Shokouh, Jacek A. Koziel, and Terry J. Engelken. "Analytical approaches for detection of breath VOC biomarkers of cattle diseases -A review." Analytica Chimica Acta (2022): 339565. DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2022.339565. Copyright 2022 Elsevier B.V. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Posted with permission

Detection of Volatile Compounds Emitted from Nasal Secretions and Serum: Towards Non-Invasive Identification of Diseased Cattle Biomarkers

Non-invasive diagnostics and finding biomarkers of disease in humans have been a very active research area. Some of the analytical technologies used for finding biomarkers of human disease are finding their use in livestock. Non-invasive sample collection from diseased cattle using breath and headspace of fecal samples have been reported. In this work, we explore the use of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from bovine nasal secretions and serum for finding biomarkers for bovine respiratory disease (BRD). One hundred nasal swabs and 100 serum samples (n = 50 for both ‘sick’ and ‘healthy’) were collected at the time of treatment for suspected BRD. Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) was used to collect headspace samples that were analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). It was possible to separate sick cattle using non-invasive analyses of nasal swabs and also serum samples by analyzing and comparing volatiles emitted from each group of samples. Four volatile compounds were found to be statistically significantly different between ‘sick’ and ‘normal’ cattle nasal swabs samples. Five volatile compounds were found to be significantly different between ‘sick’ and ‘normal’ cattle serum samples, with phenol being the common marker. Future studies are warranted to improve the extraction efficiency targeting VOCs preliminarily identified in this study. These findings bring us closer to the long-term goal of real-time, animal-side detection and separation of sick cattle.This article is published as Maurer, Devin L., Jacek A. Koziel, Terry J. Engelken, Vickie L. Cooper, and Jenna L. Funk. "Detection of Volatile Compounds Emitted from Nasal Secretions and Serum: Towards Non-Invasive Identification of Diseased Cattle Biomarkers." Separations 5, no. 1 (2018): 18. DOI: 10.3390/separations5010018. Posted with permission.</p