Udder health concepts that comply with organic principles - how to reduce therapies?

Both the consumers and the legislators expect products from healthy organic livestock. Consequently, keeping farm animals healthy has the highest priority in veterinary work on organic farms. Different Swiss FiBL projects on bovine mastitis in recent years were aimed at health concepts that comply with organic livestock production principles. This paper summarises some of the work carried out

Repair and Prepare: Strengthening Europe's Economies after the Crisis. Bertelsmann Studies

Europe is often portrayed as a ship with sails of different colours from different countries pushing the common boat in the right direction. From 2010 to 2012, that ship faced the perfect storm: The euro area almost caused the ship to sink, there was massive disagreement on how to get out of the storm, and it was unclear who was steering the ship. However, Euro-Europe eventually managed to buoy the ship while in the eye of the storm, and the decisive action by ECB President Mario Draghi, arguably not the captain of the ship, managed to steer the common project away from imminent danger

Organic conform udder health concepts. How to reduce therapies

Both consumers and governments expect quality products from healthy organic livestock. In consequence, keeping farm animals healthy has the highest priority in veterinary work on organic farms. Different Swiss FiBL projects in mastitis of the last years were aimed in health concepts conform to organic livestock principles. One project includes 20 Farms (with an average of 15 cows per farm) of a Swiss high mountain region. It puts emphasis on milking hygiene, milking technology, mastitis treatment during lactation (homeopathy versus antibiosis) and dry-off treatment (homeopathy versus placebo and partially additional antibiotic). The overall result was a reduction of cows with a somatic cell count higher than 150’000/ml based on milk recording dates between January and May from 35% in 1998 to 17% in 2000. During the project the average number of treated mastitis cases per farm decreased from 10 to 4. A second project considering farms in the north west of Switzerland was aimed at the implementation of an organically conform udder health concept putting emphasis on the reduction of the use of antibiotics. In order to achieve this, it was envisaged that factors contributing to mastitis will consistently be eliminated or at least reduced by implementation of herd health management and, in addition, by the establishment of complementary therapy and prophylaxis in udder health in co-operation with the veterinarian. On the 3 pilot farms a reduction in the use of antibiotics from 70 treatments per 100 cow and year in 2000 (previous the start of the project) to 2 treatments per 100 cow and year in 2002 (second project year) could be shown. Thereby, the udder health status of the herds remained stable with around 65% of cows with a somatic cell count lower than 100’000/ml. The objective of the current project is the enlargement and implementation of the previous concept into practice. A project team of 5 veterinarians and 2 agronomists will collect data of mastitis causing factors on 100 new farms per year in Switzerland: housing, feeding, human-cow interaction, milking technology, milking hygiene. These data will be connected to the mastitis status of the herd based on quarter milk samples and milk recording dates. During a period of at least 2, years these farms will be intensively advised by the project team and the practical veterinarian. Therapies will primarily be based on homeopathic remedies. The development of mastitis causing factors and the mastitis status of the farms is followed up at regular intervals to show possible correlations between (changing) factors and mastitis status. In addition, an Internet based network of health data should be implemented for providing information for farmers and veterinarians in herd health management

Functional Flexibility of Intestinal IgA – Broadening the Fine Line

Intestinal bacteria outnumber our own human cells in conditions of both health and disease. It has long been recognized that secretory antibody, particularly IgA, is produced in response to these microbes and hypothesized that this must play an important role in defining the relationship between a host and its intestinal microbes. However, the exact role of IgA and the mechanisms by which IgA can act are only beginning to be understood. In this review we attempt to unravel the complex interaction between so-called “natural,” “primitive” (T-cell-independent), and “classical” IgA responses, the nature of the intestinal microbiota/intestinal pathogens and the highly flexible dynamic homeostasis of the mucosal immune system. Such an analysis reveals that low-affinity IgA is sufficient to protect the host from excess mucosal immune activation induced by harmless commensal microbes. However, affinity-maturation of “classical” IgA is essential to provide protection from more invasive commensal species such as segmented filamentous bacteria and from true pathogens such as Salmonella typhimurium. Thus a correlation is revealed between “sophistication” of the IgA response and aggressiveness of the challenge. A second emerging theme is that more-invasive species take advantage of host inflammatory mechanisms to more successfully compete with the resident microbiota. In many cases, the function of IgA may be to limit such inflammatory responses, either directly by coagulating or inhibiting virulence of bacteria before they can interact with the host or by modulating immune signaling induced by host recognition. Therefore IgA appears to provide an added layer of robustness in the intestinal ecosystem, promoting “commensal-like” behavior of its residents

Group 2 Innate Lymphoid Cells in Respiratory Allergic Inflammation

Millions of people worldwide are suffering from allergic inflammatory airway disorders. These conditions are regarded as a consequence of multiple imbalanced immune events resulting in an inadequate response with the exact underlying mechanisms still being a subject of ongoing research. Several cell populations have been proposed to be involved but it is becoming increasingly evident that group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) play a key role in the initiation and orchestration of respiratory allergic inflammation. ILC2s are important mediators of inflammation but also tissue remodeling by secreting large amounts of signature cytokines within a short time period. Thereby, ILC2s instruct innate but also adaptive immune responses. Here, we will discuss the recent literature on allergic inflammation of the respiratory tract with a focus on ILC2 biology. Furthermore, we will highlight different therapeutic strategies to treat pulmonary allergic inflammation and their potential influence on ILC2 function as well as discuss the perspective of using human ILC2s for diagnostic purposes

Potency, Efficacy and Durability of DNA/DNA, DNA/Protein and Protein/Protein Based Vaccination Using gp63 Against Leishmania donovani in BALB/c Mice

Background: Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) caused by an intracellular protozoan parasite Leishmania, is fatal in the absence of treatment. At present there are no effective vaccines against any form of leishmaniasis. Here, we evaluate the potency, efficacy and durability of DNA/DNA, DNA-prime/Protein-boost, and Protein/Protein based vaccination against VL in a susceptible murine model. Methods and Findings: To compare the potency, efficacy, and durability of DNA, protein and heterologous prime-boost (HPB) vaccination against Leishmania donovani, major surface glycoprotein gp63 was cloned into mammalian expression vector pcDNA3.1 for DNA based vaccines. We demonstrated that gp63 DNA based vaccination induced immune responses and conferred protection against challenge infection. However, vaccination with HPB approach showed comparatively enhanced cellular and humoral responses than other regimens and elicited early mixed Th1/Th2 responses before infection. Moreover, challenge with parasites induced polarized Th1 responses with enhanced IFN-c, IL-12, nitric oxide, IgG2a/IgG1 ratio and reduced IL-4 and IL-10 responses compared to other vaccination strategies. Although, vaccination with gp63 DNA either alone or mixed with CpG- ODN or heterologously prime-boosting with CpG- ODN showed comparable levels of protection at short-term protection study, DNA-prime/Protein-boost in presence of CpG significantly reduced hepatic and splenic parasite load by 10 7 fold and 10 10 fold respectively, in long-term study. The extent of protection, obtained in thi