Diagnosis of Bovine Digital Dermatitis: Exploring the Usefulness of Indirect ELISA

作者：João Sucena Afonso, G. Oikonomou, Stuart Carter, Helen E. Clough, Bethany E. Griffiths, Jonathan Rushton · 发表于：Frontiers in Veterinary Science · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.3389/fvets.2021.728691 · 被引用次数：15 · 研究领域：Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies、Animal Disease Management and Epidemiology、Vector-Borne Animal Diseases

The precision by which animal diseases are diagnosed affects our ability to make informed decisions with regards to animal health management, from a clinical and economic perspective. Lameness is a major health condition in dairy cattle. The underlying causes of lameness include bovine digital dermatitis (BDD), which is reported as one of the main causes of infectious lameness in dairy cattle. Presently, the gold standard for BDD diagnosis in dairy cattle is visual inspection of lifted hooves—a labour intensive and subjective method. Research has suggested that Treponema spp. are the main pathogens associated with the establishment of BDD. We explored the potential of indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) as a diagnostic serological tool in the identification of cows at different stages of BDD. Additionally, we evaluated the predictive power of this diagnostic tool on the future occurrence of BDD lesions. A total of 232 cows from three farms were used in the study. Serum samples and hoof health data were collected at three time points: ~ 30 days pre-calving, around calving, and approximately 30 days post-calving. The mean absorbance from the ELISA test was compared across different clinical presentations of BDD as assessed by visual inspection of the hooves according to the M-stage classification system. A transition model was developed to estimate the probability of lesion occurrence in time t + 1 based on the spectrophotometer (absorbance) reading in time t . T...