Abstract
Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease of major public health concern in India. Bovines play an important role in maintaining and transmitting this disease and proximity between dairy cows and humans makes the dairy cow-human nexus a transmission route of public health interest, yet one currently under-examined in North Eastern India. We report a cross-sectional survey carried out on small-scale dairy farms in the states of Assam and Bihar in North Eastern India investigating seroprevalence for Leptospira interrogans serovar Hardjo, the most common pathogenic serovar reported in cattle worldwide. Higher seroprevalence was reported on dairy farms in Bihar 4.5% (95% CI 2.6–7.5%) than in Assam 1.2% (95% CI 0.42–3.6%), but overall seroprevalence levels were low. The study is the first indication of leptospirosis circulating in small-scale dairy farms in these states. To correlate farming practices with zoonotic risk, we combined results from a dairy farmer questionnaire with cow seroprevalence. However, low seroprevalence levels found in this study made the identification of risk factors difficult. Nevertheless, poor farming practices around hygiene and biosecurity on dairy farms have been highlighted. Implementing simple measures could mitigate environmental contamination, and therefore, reduce the risk of Leptospira interrogans, and other zoonoses transmission, at the animal-environment-human interface.
Highlights
Leptospirosis is an important re-emerging zoonosis across the world [1,2]
For the eight cows that had both L. serovar Hardjo and C. burnetii seropositive results, we examined if they had clinical histories of abortion, repeat breeding or mastitis, to see if cows with both pathogens were more at risk of presenting with clinical signs but there was no significant association between clinical signs with comorbidity (p = 1)
We found higher seroprevalence on smallscale dairy farms in Bihar 4.5% than Assam 1.2%, and higher seroprevalence within the Nalanda district of Bihar (7%, 95% CI 3.2–14%)
Summary
Leptospirosis is an important re-emerging zoonosis across the world [1,2]. In India, leptospirosis is endemic in both human and animal populations [3,4], with the country listed as a global hot spot [5] for the disease. There is increasing interest in strengthening human leptospirosis surveillance systems [10]; this focuses on human cases only and neglects the numerous animals who act as carriers, as well as environments contaminated from infected animals [11,12]. Such human-based surveillance approaches are problematic in endemic states of India where cattle have been identified as important hosts for several Leptospira serovars [8,9,13].
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