Sustainable control of helminths in dairy cattle - understanding processes leading to improved productivity

奶牛蠕虫的可持续控制——了解提高生产力的过程

• 批准号: 1644144
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Liverpool
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2015 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-1644144
• 关键词: Sustainable; control; helminths; dairy; cattle

Parasitic helminths have a major impact on animal health, welfare and productivity accounting for over 50% farm animal disease worldwide. This has a great economic cost for both farmer and industry, through cost of treatment, loss of productivity and in severe cases, loss of livestock.Current control methods within the dairy industry include the blanket use of anthelmintic drugs, often in the absence of diagnostic data. Treatment is usually aimed at young stock, it is assumed that once animals enter the milking herd they have acquired sufficient immunity to resist infection. The introduction of new pour-on macrocyclic lactones that have zero milk withdrawal period, prolong the window for treatment. Anecdotal claims that this treatment results in short-term increases in yield, have led to an increased use of these anthelmintics in recent years. These claims that have not been properly quantified, especially in high yielding animals. Therefore there is a need to evaluate the use of anthelmintics, to provide advice on their use so as not to accelerate or encourage the development of anthelmintic resistance. The project aims to test the hypothesis that anthelmintic treatment of milking cows results in improved milk yield and quality. Using cohorts from high-yielding, organic and conventional dairy herds, this project will produce experimental data and model simulations to further our understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind these changes.Amongst the several species of parasitic helminths, Fasciola hepatica, Dictyocaulus viviparus, Ostertagia ostertagi, Cooperia spp. and Trichostrongylus spp. are of interest. Current methods for identifying infected animals and speciating nematode populations have low sensitivity and specificity due to the morphological similarity in nematode eggs. As a partner in a major EU consortium, University of Liverpool has links with Free University of Berlin, who have developed a new Luminex based assay to detect specific antibodies in milk to five species of helminth affecting cattle. We will develop, optimise and validate a multiplex PCR (MT-PCR) for a UK setting, to define the species mix infecting each animal.

寄生蠕虫对动物健康、福利和生产力有重大影响，占全球农场动物疾病的50%以上。这对农民和工业都有很大的经济成本，包括治疗成本、生产力损失，严重时还会损失牲畜。目前乳品行业的控制方法包括全面使用驱虫药物，通常在缺乏诊断数据的情况下。治疗通常是针对年轻的股票，这是假设，一旦动物进入挤奶牛群，他们已经获得了足够的免疫力，以抵抗感染。引入新的大环内酯浇泼剂，零停乳期，延长治疗窗口。传闻称，这种治疗方法会在短期内增加产量，导致近年来这些驱虫剂的使用增加。这些声明尚未得到适当的量化，特别是在高产动物中。因此，有必要评估驱虫药的使用，提供使用建议，以免加速或鼓励驱虫药耐药性的发展。该项目的目的是检验这样一种假设，即对奶牛进行驱虫治疗可以提高牛奶产量和质量。利用来自高产、有机和传统奶牛群的队列，该项目将产生实验数据和模型模拟，以进一步了解这些变化背后的潜在机制。在几种寄生蠕虫中，肝片形吸虫（Fasciola hepatica）、胎生网尾线虫（Dictyocaulus viviparus）、奥斯特线虫（Ostertagia ostertagi）、古柏线虫（Cooperia spp.）和毛圆线虫属（Trichostrongylus spp.）都是有意义的。由于线虫卵的形态相似性，目前用于鉴定感染动物和线虫种群物种的方法灵敏度和特异性较低。作为欧盟一个主要财团的合作伙伴，利物浦大学与柏林自由大学建立了联系，后者开发了一种新的基于Luminex的检测方法，用于检测牛奶中五种影响牛的蠕虫的特异性抗体。我们将开发，优化和验证多重PCR（MT-PCR）的英国设置，以确定感染每只动物的物种混合。