Clinical and laboratory investigations of the outbreaks of foot‐and‐mouth disease in southern England in 2007

Abstract

A case of foot-and-mouth disease (fmd) on a cattle farm in Normandy, Surrey, was confirmed on Friday August 3, 2007, the first case in the uk since 2001. The infection was detected nearby on a second farm on August 6. On September 12, fmd was confirmed on a farm approximately 20 km from Normandy in Egham, and this was followed by cases on five more farms in that area in the next three weeks. The majority of the infected farms consisted of multiple beef cattle holdings in semi-urban areas. In total, 1578 animals were culled on the infected farms, and fmd virus infection was confirmed in 278 of them by the detection of viral antigen, genome or antibodies to the virus, or by clinical signs. This paper describes the findings from animal inspections on the infected farms, including the estimated ages of the fmd lesions and the numbers of animals infected. It also summarises the test results from samples taken for investigation, including the detection of preclinically viraemic animals by using real-time reverse transcriptase-pcr.

Şap Hastalıklı Boğalarda Serum ve Salya Sialik Asit ve Oksidatif Stres Parametrelerindeki Değişiklikler

“…Clinical signs (acute fever, anorexia, vesicular lesions in the mouth and feet of infected animals with consequent excessive salivation, lameness and reduced productivity) determined in this study were in agreement with those reported for FMD [6,[11][12][13] .…”

“…However, even in some breeds of cattle, FMD can also be clinically difficult to recognize because of the mild appearance of the disease [10] . The disease is typically characterized by acute fever and the development of vesicular lesions in the mouth and feet of infected cloven-hoofed animals (principally cattle, pigs, sheep and goats) with consequent excessive salivation, anorexia, lameness, mortality of young animals and reduced productivity [10][11][12][13] . Foot-and-mouth disease usually has a high morbidity and low mortality, with mortality occurring mostly in young animals [6] .…”

Preliminary Validation of Direct Detection of Foot-And-Mouth Disease Virus within Clinical Samples Using Reverse Transcription Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Coupled with a Simple Lateral Flow Device for Detection

“…This plasmid contained the target sequences of both the one step real-time RT-PCR assay used in this study [15] as well as the region amplified by the RT-LAMP assay [24]. The resultant viral RNA was resuspended in DEPC treated water and quantified at A 260 using a NanoDrop ND-1000 spectrophotometer.…”

“…The RT-PCR assay used was a one-step assay that amplifies a 107 nucleotide fragment within the highly conserved 3D region of the FMDV genome, as previously described [15]. All samples assayed using this method were tested in triplicate.…”

“…This, therefore, results in it having a much higher diagnostic sensitivity than the LFD. Indeed pre-clinical detection of FMDV in animals was demonstrated in the field during the 2007 FMD outbreak in the UK using RT-qPCR [15].…”