Abstract
This study investigated the potential of pooled milk as an alternative sample type for foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) surveillance. Real‐time RT‐PCR (rRT‐PCR) results of pooled milk samples collected weekly from five pooling facilities in Nakuru County, Kenya, were compared with half‐month reports of household‐level incidence of FMD. These periodic cross‐sectional surveys of smallholder farmers were powered to detect a threshold household‐level FMD incidence of 2.5% and collected information on trends in milk production and sales. FMD virus (FMDV) RNA was detected in 9/219 milk samples, and using a type‐specific rRT‐PCR, serotype SAT 1 was identified in 3/9 of these positive samples, concurrent with confirmed outbreaks in the study area. Four milk samples were FMDV RNA‐positive during the half‐months when at least one farmer reported FMD; that is, the household‐level clinical incidence was above a threshold of 2.5%. Additionally, some milk samples were FMDV RNA‐positive when there were no reports of FMD by farmers. These results indicate that the pooled milk surveillance system can detect FMD household‐level incidence at a 2.5% threshold when up to 26% of farmers contributed milk to pooling facilities, but perhaps even at lower levels of infection (i.e., below 2.5%), or when conventional disease reporting systems fail. Further studies are required to establish a more precise correlation with estimates of household‐level clinical incidence, to fully evaluate the reliability of this approach. However, this pilot study highlights the potential use of this non‐invasive, routinely collected, cost‐effective surveillance tool, to address some of the existing limitations of traditional surveillance methods.
Highlights
In regions where foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is endemic such as East Africa, surveillance is often dependent upon the recognition and reporting of clinical cases by farmers and livestock workers (Bates et al, 2003; Machira & Kitala, 2017; Picado et al, 2011)
Results from the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) were cross-tabulated with the FMD clinical incidence in the entire study area, defined as the TA B L E 1 Descriptive summary of the study population
Previous studies have demonstrated the potential of using milk from individual animals as an alternative sample type for FMD virus (FMDV) detection and surveillance (Armson et al, 2019) and that it is possible to detect FMDV in highly diluted milk samples from individual clinical cases (Armson et al, 2018)
Summary
In regions where foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is endemic such as East Africa, surveillance is often dependent upon the recognition and reporting of clinical cases by farmers and livestock workers (Bates et al, 2003; Machira & Kitala, 2017; Picado et al, 2011). Vesicular epithelium and fluid samples are collected so that detection and characterization of the causal FMDV lineage may be carried out to inform the epidemiological situation and control strategies (Paton, Sumption, & Charleston, 2009). These sample types may only be collected from acutely infected animals and are invasive and labour-intensive to collect. Animals with sub-clinical FMD infection are unlikely to be identified, but may still play an important role in disease transmission (Sutmoller & Casas, 2002)
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