This study describes the national program of year-round surveillance and monitoring for avian influenza (AI). The validity of the epidemiologically-based surveillance scheme was assessed. Korea’s current surveillance program is aimed at detecting subclinical infection of either the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus or the low pathogenic avian influenza virus, types H5 and H7, both of which carry risk of converting to HPAI. The current AI surveillance program has demonstrated that implementing a surveillance strategy is plausible. Farmer and livestock related professional support is the critical step of specimen collection to discover hidden infection. Early detection of AI virus infection can achieve best by the combined efforts of farmers, animal health authorities, and other related industries.
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the use of an immunochromatographic test (ICT) strip using recombinant MPB70 (rMPB70) protein as a complementary tool for the diagnosis of naturally occurring tuberculosis in cattle. The study was performed on 249 cattle from populations known to be free from Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) and 119 cattle with M. bovis infection, confirmed postmortem. Compared to reference standards (culture isolation and/or visible lesion), the sensitivity of ICT was 94.12% (95% CI: 89.89∼98.35%) while the specificity was 96.80% (95% CI; 94.62∼96.82%). The findings indicate that the ICT strip is efficient for diagnosing bovine tuberculosis in cattle from Korea.
Lacticin NK34 is a small nisin-like bacteriocin present in the supernatants of an isolate of Lactococcus lactis from jeotgal, a salted and fermented Korean food made with seafood such as shrimp, oysters, and fish. Recently, we demonstrated that a partially purified NK34 is highly effective against various Staphylococcus species in a murine infection model. In this study, the two major bacterial pathogens associated with bovine mastitis, Streptococcus aureus and S. agalactiae, were evaluated for their susceptibility to NK34 in vitro using a standard teat-dip assay as well as in vivo using mastitic cows infected with one of these pathogenic strains. The experimental analyses showed a significant decrease (up to 98 times) in the bacterial numbers between the NK34-treated and -untreated teats. Moreover, a dramatic reduction in somatic cell counts was observed at 3 days post-treatment with 10 ml of NK34 administered directly into the mastitic cows. Neither S. aureus nor S. agalactiae were recovered. Taken together, these results imply that lacticin NK34 is an alternative antimicrobial substitute for the treatment of bovine mastitis, caused especially by either S. aureus or S. agalactiae.
Brucellosis is a notorious zoonotic disease with global implications. Efforts to control the spread of the disease have been restricted to the agricultural livestock. Increasing incidences of accidental human infection have motivated researches to start working on alternative vaccines. At present, live attenuated vaccines are the only accepted type of vaccines used in developed countries for the prevention of brucellosis. Although serodiagnosis is occasionally unreliable, some countries have already claimed to have eradicated the disease, based on this testing. Live attenuated vaccines are not suitable for use in pregnant and immune-depressed animals. Moreover, these vaccines are not tolerated in humans. Therefore, many researches have been striving to discover alternative methods of vaccination. Most research has focused on the generation of subcellular, subunit, and DNA vaccines that are as efficient as the live attenuated vaccines. At present, none of the available vaccines has been able to replace the live attenuated vaccines. Therefore, additional research is necessary in order to discover a new brucellosis vaccine that is suitable for human use.