Effects of hypertonic dextrose and paraffin solution as non‐antibiotic treatments of clinical endometritis on reproductive performance of high producing dairy cows

Abstract

Contents The objective of this study was to compare the reproductive performance of cows affected by clinical endometritis (CE) following treatment with an intrauterine infusion of 50% dextrose solutions (DEX) and liquid paraffin (LP) as alternative therapies with routine treatments including PGF2α injection and intrauterine infusion of oxytetracycline (OTC). Moreover, the reproductive indices of cows treated with endometritis were compared with those of healthy ones. At postpartum reproductive tract examination (28–35 DIM) in one Iranian dairy farm, cows with CE without any selection were assigned to four groups: (a) OTC, a common treatment in Iran, was administered (5 g) to 396 cows, (b) PGF2α (PG) was injected to 496 cows, (c) dextrose solution (DEX): intrauterine infusion of 50% dextrose solution (200 ml) was done in 427 cows, and (d) liquid paraffin (LP) was administered (100 ml) to 423 cows via intrauterine route. We further assigned 2,233 clinically healthy cows to the control group. The incidence of endometritis was 41.6% in this study. Based on the results of reproductive indices including median days to first AI, days open (DO), first service conception rate, conception rate in 2nd and 3rd services, conception rate in all three services, pregnancy rate < 100 days and pregnancy rate < 200 days, except for median days to first AI in other reproductive indexes, reproductive performance was significantly lower in LP group compared with the healthy cows and other treatment groups (p < 0.05). Except for the first service conception rate and proportion of cows pregnant before 100 days in milk (DIM), there existed no significant difference between the DEX group and the control as far as reproductive performance is concerned (p ≥ 0.05). The first service conception rate was recognizably lower in DEX group compared with OTC and PG (p < 0.05). In conclusion, the use of a non‐antibiotic special solution of dextrose 50% is a good alternative to antibiotic agents concerning the treatment of CE in dairy cows.

Recent advances and future directions for uterine diseases diagnosis, pathogenesis, and management in dairy cows

“…The fourth study cows were diagnosed for clinical endometritis at 30 ± 3 days and treated with one of five treatments: (1) 200 mL of 50% dextrose intrauterine; (2) intrauterine infusion of 5g of oxytetracycline; (3) PGF 2α -500 mg of cloprostenol sodium; (4) 100 mL of paraffin liquid intrauterine; or (5) left untreated. Although no cure rates for endometritis were evaluated in this study, the reproductive performance of cows treated with dextrose was not improved when compared to cows left untreated (Ahmadi et al, 2019). The inconsistent results suggest that more research is needed to consolidate if dextrose is a beneficial therapy for the treatment of clinical endometritis.…”

“…(3) PGF2α -500 mg of cloprostenol sodium; (4) 100 mL of paraffin liquid intrauterine; or (5) left untreated. The results of the study indicated that the use of intrauterine paraffin impaired reproductive performance when compared to untreated control cows (Ahmadi et al, 2019). Thus, liquid paraffin should not be considered an option to treat endometritis.…”

“…A series of studies investigated the use of dextrose to treat clinical endometritis in the last decade (Ahmadi et al, 2019;Brick et al, 2012;Machado et al, 2015;Maquivar et al, 2015). The results are inconsistent.…”

“…A study evaluated the use of liquid paraffin to treat cows with endometritis (Ahmadi et al, 2019). The rationale for liquid paraffin is the promotion of migration of macrophages and other phagocytes to improve local immune response in the uterus.…”

“…The understanding of uterine diseases microbiome also had tremendous progress and created opportunities for the development of novel preventives to improve the management of uterine diseases ( Bicalho et al., 2012 ; Freick et al., 2017 ; Galvão et al., 2019a ; Jeon et al., 2018 ; Machado et al., 2014 ; Sheldon et al., 2010 ). Indeed, in the last decade, over a dozen of non-antimicrobial therapeutics to prevent and treat metritis and endometritis has been investigated with encouraging results ( Ahmadi et al., 2019 ; Ametaj et al., 2014 ; ATLAS Collaboration, 2017 ; Brick et al., 2012 ; Daetz et al., 2016 ; Escandon et al., 2020 ; Genis et al., 2018 ; Machado et al., 2012 ; Pinedo et al., 2015 ). Genome-enable prediction for health traits ( McNeel et al., 2017 ; Lopes et al., 2020 ), activity monitors ( Barragan et al., 2018 ; Stangaferro et al., 2016 ), biomarkers ( Barragan et al., 2018 , 2019 ; Dervishi et al., 2018 ; Wisnieski et al., 2019 ; Zhang et al., 2017 ), immune cells profile ( Pomeroy et al., 2017 ), machine learning predictive models ( Bogado Pascottini et al., 2020 ) are others innovative tools that have been explored in the recent years to help mitigate negative impacts of uterine diseases.…”