UK: Bovine Mastitis: Could A Vaccine Be On The Way?

[Guest guest]

So this vaccine will undoubtedly get into the milk. Which means the

consumers will be vaccinated too? And how about the bluttongue vaccine that

the UK government is urging on UK farmers - this vaccine will be passed on

through the food chain? I won't even consider the antibiotics that are

routinely given to chickens...

How have we, at the top end of the food chain, have a hope....?

Sue x

Bovine Mastitis: Could A Vaccine Be On The Way?

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2008) — It is the most common infectious disease in

farmed animals. Around one million cases occur each year in the UK. It is

painful, occasionally life threatening, and costs the dairy industry £200m

every year in lost production and treatments. Within the UK alone it has

been estimated that around 12m doses of antibiotic are used annually to

control and treat mastitis in cattle.

Now The University of Nottingham, with funding worth £2.2m, is to carry out

a study of the most common cause of Bovine Mastitis in the UK —

Streptococcus uberis (S. Uberis). If researchers can identify which parts of

the bacteria enable the infection their results could lead to the production

of an effective vaccine.

Leigh, Professor of Molecular Bacteriology, who has recently joined

the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, said: “We hope to uncover

bacterial antigens of potential use in vaccines aimed at preventing bovine

mastitis and provide a detailed understanding of how animals can fight off

the disease.”

Bovine Mastitis is a bacterial infection of the udder in dairy cows. S.

Uberis is responsible for a significant proportion of clinical mastitis

worldwide — but unlike many other bacteria that cause the disease S. Uberis

is also in the environment — it is found in pasture and bedding and can even

colonise the cow at other body sites with no ill effect — so it is difficult

to see how it can be controlled by changes to animal husbandry and

milking-time hygiene.

With funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

(BBSRC) the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science has established

research laboratories at the Institute for Animal Health (IAH). The project

is being conducted in collaboration with Dr Tracey Coffey’s Bovine Genomics

group based at IAH and other groups at the Royal Veterinary College, the US

Department of Agriculture in the UK and the University of Oxford.

Professor Leigh said: “We will use state-of-the-art molecular technology to

determine the differences between strains of S. Uberis that can and cannot

cause disease. Proteins that are only present in the disease causing strains

hold the key to determining which components are essential for infection. We

will show which of these proteins are most likely to make an effective

vaccine by producing strains of S. Uberis which lack the ability to produce

each of these proteins; if a strain lacking a particular protein is less

able to cause disease then this protein is important for the disease process

and becomes a candidate for vaccine development.”

The team also want to identify any parts of the immune response in the dairy

cow which can be altered to prevent the disease — this information could

subsequently be used to develop drugs that interfere with the chemical

messages that lead to inflammation and therefore reduce the level of disease

In the last few months members of the Nottingham Vet School have been

involved in successfully winning a number of grants and awards to support

the School’s growing portfolio of research.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Nottingham.