Abstract
Paratuberculosis (Johne's disease) is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease, primarily affecting ruminants. The aetiologic agent is Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP). The disease is characterised by persistent diarrhea, weight loss and protein-losing enteropathy. Paratuberculosis can cause significant economic loss in affected herds, as a result of reduced milk yield, increased incidence of mastitis, altered milk constituents, increased somatic cell counts, poor feed conversion, increased susceptibility to disease in general, reduced reproductive efficiency, premature culling and reduced cull cow values. The economic impact of paratuberculosis includes production losses due to sub-clinical and clinical cases, losses due to increased replacement of animals and costs of control measures. Due to the fact that most cases of paratuberculosis are subclinical and precise prevalence data are often lacking, it is difficult to assess the economic consequences of paratuberculosis. For instance, estimates of milk production losses are inconsistent. Some studies found equivalent or even higher milk productions in test-positive animals. Other studies showed losses in test-positive animals of up to 19.5% of the 0 to 305 days-in-milk production, depending on parity.
Highlights
Paratuberculosis (PTB) is infective granulomatous enteritis of ruminants
The results of this study demonstrated association of subclinical Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) infection diagnosed by USDA-licensed MAP-enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with an average 3.95% reduction in milk production
Economic losses caused by paratuberculosis in dairy cattle herds represent a severe problem for farmers and for dairy industry
Summary
Paratuberculosis (PTB) is infective granulomatous enteritis of ruminants. The disease is called Johne's disease and it is an incurable illness. Direct economic losses include: mortality of clinically ill animals and decreased slaughter value or complete distraint of slaughtered animals, reduced milk production in quantity and quality (changes in milk parameters, increased somatic cells counts, increased incidence of mastitis), decreased pregnancy rate and increased post-partum complications (decreased fertility rate within the herd), poor feed conversion in clinically and in subclinically infected animals, decreased productive age length, increased predisposition to other chronic diseases in herds affected with paratuberculosis (chronic arthritis, rumenitis, dermatitis, mastitis, etc.). The diagnostic test for discriminating infected from presumed non-infected animals represents an important factor influencing the assessment of production loss associated with paratuberculosis (Hendrick et al, 2005; Vidić et al.,2011b).
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