The Epidemiology of Mycobacterium bovis in Buffalo in Iran

Abstract

Mycobacterium bovis is the cause of bovine tuberculosis (bovine Tb) in animals and is considered to be zoonotic and accordingly it infects humans, although cattle are the main host. Buffalo can also be infected and develop bovine Tb. In Iran, almost half a million buffaloes are farmed, mainly in three provinces. In West Azerbaijan, which has the largest numbers of buffaloes, cattle and buffalo are often farmed together. According to the reports of the Iranian Veterinary Organization over the last 25 years, there have been no reports of bovine Tb in buffalo, although the disease is often reported in cattle in this province. Eighteen and 140 pathology specimens from cattle and buffalo, respectively, collected from West Azerbaijani abattoirs were cultured. From one buffalo specimen out of 140, M. bovis was recovered, whereas the pathogen was isolated from 13 cattle specimens. Spoligotyping showed a relatively higher polymorphism within these isolates compared with M. bovis isolated from other Iranian provinces.

Isolation and identification of bacteria from tracheas and lungs of buffaloes in Dinajpur

“…(16.25%) could be isolated and identified. Similar causal agents were also described by other researhers (8,11,12).…”

African 1, an Epidemiologically Important Clonal Complex of Mycobacterium bovis Dominant in Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad

“…Although the number of strains sampled in each of these countries was small, the high frequency of Af1 in the four west-central African countries supports our conclusion that the Af1 clonal complex is not uniformly distributed throughout Africa but is dominant in sub-Saharan west-central Africa. Previously published large-scale spoligotype population surveys of M. bovis strains from Europe (France, Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Czech Republic, and Portugal) (2,5,6,19,20,31,33,39,55,59,61,70), the Middle East (Iran) (63), and South and Central America (14,45,71) do not show a high frequency of strains with spacer 30 missing, suggesting that if Af1 strains are present, they are not at the high frequency seen in west-central Africa and supporting our suggestion of geographical localization of the Af1 clonal complex to this region of Africa.…”

European 1: A globally important clonal complex of Mycobacterium bovis

“…In most of mainland Europe, the United States of America (USA), Canada, Australia, Cuba and some South American countries bovine TB has been reduced or eliminated from domestic cattle by the long term application of a test-and-slaughter policy that removed infected cattle (Amanfu, 2006;Ayele et al, 2004;Cosivi et al, 1995;Smith et al, 2006a;Thoen et al, 2006a;Thoen et al, 2006b). With the exception of Australia and some Caribbean Islands (Tweddle and Livingstone, 1994), many of these countries still have occasional, and sometimes persistent, outbreaks of bovine TB associated with either the import of infected cattle from other countries or the maintenance of the disease in a wildlife host.…”

“…About 70% of the cattle are found in areas with high disease prevalence although nearly 17% are in areas virtually free from TB . For the rest of the world, bovine TB is thought to be endemic in cattle and there have been, with notable exceptions, few molecular epidemiological surveys of the strains present in each country Jeon et al, 2008;Tadayon et al, 2006;Thoen et al, 2006a).…”