いわゆる初生豚の大腸菌症に関する疫学調査および予防試験について

Abstract

On a hog farm in Gumma Prefecture, the first outbreak of so-called colisepsis, or infection with Escherichia coli, of newborn piglets occurred in the spring of 1961. About 140 piglets, produced by sows kept on the same farm, were raised on the farm in the summer of 1962, when almost all of them were involved in the second outbreak of this disease and succumbed of infection.1. Etiological examination indicated that they had died of septicemia caused by E. coli. No other bacteria or known viruses were isolated from them.2. The amount of gamma-globulin in the serum was much smaller in piglets involved in clinical infection than in healthy piglets of the same age kept on other farms. It was impossible to detect any antibody against the colon bacilli derived from the organs of clinically infected piglets from the colostrum of sows which had given birth to the piglets.3. In an experiment of prevention of this disease, the fatality rate for the first week was only 6.5 per cent among animals which had received preventive inoculation, while it was about 70 per cent among untreated control animals.