Preventive veterinary medicine最新文献

{"title":"The effect of age on the excretion of ovine herpesvirus-2 (OvHV-2), the causative agent of malignant catarrhal fever (MCF), in naturally infected sheep.","authors":"Mohammad Rahim Haji Hajikolaei, Masoud Reza Seyfi Abad Shapouri, Tara Tahmasbi, Maryam Faghani, Shoroush Hasanpour, Hamzeh Ghobadian Diali","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106638","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106638","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Malignant catarrhal fever (MCF) is one of the most important viral diseases affecting cattle and buffaloes. One of the viruses associated with this disease is ovine herpesvirus 2 (OvHV-2), which is responsible for sheep-associated MCF. Sheep serve as the reservoir host for OvHV-2, transmitting the virus susceptible species such as buffaloes and cattle. Virus shedding in sheep is thought to be age-dependent. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate OvHV-2 infection in sheep and determine the age at which virus excretion occurs. For this purpose, 191 female sheep from four suburbs of Ahvaz were studied. The studied sheep were female and according to incisors teeth formula divided into six age groups; 3-< 6, 6-< 12 months to 1, 2, 3,and ≥ 4 years. Blood and nasal swab samples were taken from each animal. Buffy coats were removed from the blood samples, and DNA extraction were performed from buffy coats and swab sample. Semi-nested PCR was used to detect OvHV-2 DNA. The PCR results showed that 89.5 % of blood samples and 78.5 % of nasal swabs were positive for OvHV-2. Nasal excretion of the virus was observed across all ages groups, though the frequency varied with age. A significant correlation was found between presence of virus in blood and detection of virus in nasal swap samples. In conclusion, sheep of all ages are capable to excretion OvHV-2 through nasal secretion, posing a risk of infecting susceptible animals.</p>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"244 ","pages":"106638"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144804618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessing the impact of behaviour change intervention strategies on the biosecurity knowledge, attitudes, and practices of pig producers in New South Wales, Australia.","authors":"J Manyweathers, J Rees, L Hayes, N Schembri, V J Brookes, M Hernandez-Jover","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106636","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106636","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Biosecurity legislation in New South Wales is based upon a 'shared responsibility' framework with all stakeholders playing a role in protecting the pig industry. Government and industry bodies face challenges in supporting pig owners to adopt protective biosecurity measures, particularly within the industry's smallholder (non-commercial) sector. This study is part of a government-university project to improve biosecurity management planning and emergency animal disease preparedness among pig owners and producers in New South Wales. An evaluation of the impact of behaviour change strategies co-designed by industry and government to support smallholder pig producers/owners in strengthening biosecurity practices was conducted, using a baseline (186 respondents) and endline (77 respondents) comparison, with interviews adding depth of understanding about the impact of the interventions. Responses indicated a low level of exposure to the targeted engagement strategies overall, suggesting that distribution pathways used were ineffective in reaching the target audience. Those who reported exposure to the interventions were more likely (P < 0.05) to report a recent improvement on biosecurity practices than those who not exposed. Despite this positive impact, there was no significant difference between biosecurity practices of survey populations between the two surveys. Overall, the level of biosecurity implementation was low. The risk posed by poor biosecurity uptake, particularly by the non-commercial sectors, remains significant. Future engagement strategy design must use routes to engage all sectors of the industry more effectively - for example, by addressing interests, identities, and values, followed by comprehensive evaluation to achieve the most effective distribution of interventions within the non-commercial sector.</p>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"244 ","pages":"106636"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144804617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mitigating between-farm disease transmission through simulating vehicle rerouting and enhanced cleaning and disinfection protocols.","authors":"Jason A Galvis, Cesar A Corzo, Gustavo Machado","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106650","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106650","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The role of contaminated vehicles and the effectiveness of preventive strategies, such as cleaning and disinfection (C&D), in spreading infectious diseases among commercial swine farms under field conditions remains largely unexplored. This study aimed to reduce the risk of between-farm disease transmission through vehicle contacts by rerouting vehicles while considering C&D events and effectiveness. Vehicles were ranked based on specific criteria, including disease status of visited farms, vehicle contact network communities, C&D events, and shipment time efficiency. The rerouting system showed that, even when C&D was utterly inefficient, it reduced up to 42 % of the contacts between infected and uninfected farms via vehicle movements and 17 % of the total number of interactions between farms from distinct network communities. The rerouting efficacy increased with a C&D effectiveness of 100 %, reducing up to 100 % contacts between infected and uninfected farms and between farms from distinct network communities. Despite the potential benefit of preventing disease dissemination between the farms, the rerouting system increased by up to 81 % in C&D events and up to 54 % in distance traveled per vehicle. Ultimately, we have demonstrated that a rerouting vehicle system holds potential as an additional strategic tool for preventing and controlling the spread of diseases among farms through vehicle movements; however, given the additional time and effort required, its cost-benefit will depend on the severity of the disease being mitigated.</p>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"244 ","pages":"106650"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144817299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evaluation of a data-driven tool to monitor youngstock rearing in dairy herds: Perception by its users and validation of improvement options.","authors":"Anouk M B Veldhuis, Henriëtte Brouwer-Middelesch, Nienke Paarlberg, Angela Deterink, Thomas Dijkstra, Lourens Heres, Debora Smits, Thijs Poll, Sabine Stoelinga, Inge Santman-Berends","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106637","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106637","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Since 2018, dairy farmers in the Netherlands have access to a census data-driven tool to monitor calf rearing quality, called \"KalfOK\". Participants (N ≈ 12,000; 95 % of the population of dairy farms) receive a quarterly farm report with a score ranging between 0 and 100 points. The score is built on points graded for the value of 12 indicators for youngstock rearing quality (e.g. 'percentage of live births'). This study aimed to validate KalfOK's performance to distinguish farms with either reduced or excellent calf health, by the assessment of 205 farm visits by independent veterinarians. In a second part of the study, KalfOK was evaluated by means of a questionnaire amongst 324 randomly selected dairy farmers. They were surveyed on their experiences with KalfOK and suggestions for improvement. Feasible suggestions were included in a scenario analysis to quantify the impact of these proposed changes on the performance of KalfOK. Results showed that KalfOK's sensitivity to distinguish farms with very high calf rearing quality is 83.3 % (95 % CI: 36-100), with a corresponding specificity of 63.8 % (95 % CI: 55-72). The sensitivity to detect farms with supposedly low calf rearing quality was estimated to be 83.3 % (95 % CI: 36-100), with corresponding specificity of 75.6 % (95 % CI: 67-83). Surveyed farmers made a number of suggestions for improvement of KalfOK related to alternative calculation of health indicators, such as adapting the temporal unit used for calculating indicators from quarterly to annually, and clemency in the event of perinatal mortality of twin/triplet calves. Scenario analyses revealed that such alternatives, perceived by farmers as improvement options, are not always in their interest as they either lead to lower scores or they reduce KalfOK's performance in distinguishing high and low performing farms. Results also revealed that about 50 % of the dairy farmers do not actively use the tool in their calf rearing management. This means that in order to improve uptake of KalfOK by farmers, substantial communication efforts should be made to change farmer's perceptions of KalfOK by emphasizing the tool's possibilities, limitations and added value.</p>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"244 ","pages":"106637"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144817276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Automating classification of veterinary biosecurity recommendations using machine learning","authors":"Vitória R. Lima-Campêlo ,&nbsp;Mariana Fonseca ,&nbsp;Marie-Pascale Morin ,&nbsp;Faustin Farison ,&nbsp;William L. Nankam Nguekap ,&nbsp;Karol G. Solano-Suarez ,&nbsp;Herman W. Barkema ,&nbsp;Waseem Shaukat ,&nbsp;David L. Renaud ,&nbsp;David F. Kelton ,&nbsp;Gilles Fecteau ,&nbsp;Jean-Philippe Roy ,&nbsp;Pablo Valdés Donoso ,&nbsp;Solène Le Manac'h ,&nbsp;Juan C. Arango-Sabogal ,&nbsp;Marie-Ève Paradis ,&nbsp;Nancy Beauregard ,&nbsp;Manon Racicot ,&nbsp;Cécile Aenishaenslin ,&nbsp;Simon Dufour","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106723","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106723","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>ProAction® is a mandatory Canadian milk quality assurance program that requires dairy farmers to conduct a biosecurity risk assessment with a veterinarian. Based on this assessment, the veterinarian provides personalized recommendations to improve farm biosecurity, resulting in a large volume of text data. This study aimed to develop a machine learning model capable of automatically classifying these biosecurity recommendations into 12 predefined categories. As the recommendations were written in French or English, all texts were translated into French to ensure consistency in feature extraction and model training. The model was trained on 11,250 manually classified veterinary recommendations from 3825 Québec dairy herds, collected between 2018 and 2021. Three algorithms were tested: Multinomial Naïve Bayes (MNB), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Random Forest (RF). Performance was evaluated using precision, recall, and F1-score. The SVM achieved the highest performance while maintaining efficient processing time. The trained SVM model was selected to classify new recommendations collected between 2022 and 2024 from herds in Alberta, Ontario and Québec. To evaluate model’s performance on this new dataset, a random sample of 250 recommendations was manually classified. The agreement between human classification and model predictions resulted in a Cohen’s Kappa of 0.88, suggesting strong agreement. This study highlights the potential of machine learning to classify biosecurity recommendations and support timely, informed decision-making in dairy herd management.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 106723"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145308889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Views from chief veterinary officers about decision making during animal health emergencies: A qualitative analysis","authors":"Yrjö T. Gröhn ,&nbsp;Guillaume Lhermie ,&nbsp;Dirk Pfeiffer ,&nbsp;Gregorio Torres ,&nbsp;Elizabeth L. Fox ,&nbsp;Julia A. Hertl","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106721","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106721","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study’s objectives were to investigate how delegates of the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), particularly chief veterinary officers (CVOs), make decisions requiring immediate action, having national/international impacts on animal health and welfare and/or human health, and how the process creates new policies and practices. We interviewed 33 CVOs from 6 continents, on their background, jurisdiction, institutional structures, and decision-making processes, including types of decisions made, who they consulted, information used (and wished they knew), political, public and other influences, and resultant policy changes. The CVOs also discussed surprising and challenging phenomena, and what they learned. Qualitative analysis was conducted on interview transcriptions. Most CVOs had similar decision-making processes. They followed established protocols and national legislation aligned with WOAH international standards, relying on multidisciplinary teams of experts in science, economics, policy, and law, and those with knowledge of local field conditions, for guidance. Insufficient information and conflict between scientific evidence and political/economic pressure were common themes. Although stressful, most CVOs were committed to their work and felt they made valuable contributions towards both animal and human health. The findings suggest that regardless of background or specific geographical context, CVOs follow established protocols and need to have the ability to make informed subjective judgements as part of their decision making. Thus, CVO qualifications include subject matter knowledge and specific leadership qualities, which need to be considered when making CVO appointments. Presently, veterinarians receive inadequate training on integrating evidence and other factors to make informed, 'good' decisions. This study’s findings should be considered when developing the educational programs for veterinary students and established practitioners.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 106721"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Classification of donkey systems in Ethiopia","authors":"Girma Birhan Asteraye ,&nbsp;Ruth Jobling ,&nbsp;Wudu T. Jemberu ,&nbsp;Gina Pinchbeck ,&nbsp;Theodore J.D. Knight-Jones ,&nbsp;Rob Critchlow ,&nbsp;Jonathan Rushton ,&nbsp;Gemma L. Chaters","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106719","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106719","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Working donkeys play a critical role in transportation, agriculture and household resilience in low- and middle-income countries. Other animals that are kept for production purposes, such as cattle, are often grouped into broad production system classes, such as dairy or pastoral, for comparison between and better understanding of the needs and outputs of animals within specific sectors. Despite the importance of working donkeys for sustaining livelihoods there are no systematic classifications of these populations. The aim of this study was to classify and characterise donkey systems in Ethiopia using household-level questionnaire data which included donkey ownership, husbandry, use and local environment data, through multiple factor and hierarchical cluster analysis. Household questionnaire data from 241 donkey-owning households in three districts of Ethiopia were used. Three distinct clusters of donkey ownership were identified: ‘Domestic-Pastoral’; ‘Domestic-Agricultural’ and ‘Commercial’. Differences between systems are primarily influenced by donkey purpose, environmental (agro-ecological) factors, and husbandry practices. Constraints associated with donkey ownership varied across clusters: households in the commercial system reported higher incidence of injuries and welfare concerns, in the pastoral system the main constraints were drought and feed shortage, and domestic-agricultural households reported infectious diseases as the main challenge. This new classification of donkey systems provides a framework for analysing donkey health and welfare data, enabling more context-specific needs assessments and facilitating the design of targeted interventions to improve equid health and household livelihoods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 106719"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145313475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of the timing of PRRSV and swine enteric coronaviruses introduction on wean-to-market productivity","authors":"Kate Dion ,&nbsp;Daniel Linhares ,&nbsp;Gustavo S. Silva ,&nbsp;Edison Magalhães ,&nbsp;Derald Holtkamp","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106720","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106720","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>PRRSV and SeCoV can significantly decrease the productivity of growing pigs by increasing mortality rates and decreasing growth, resulting in economic losses for swine producers. A better understanding of how infection patterns of these viral pathogens occur in growing pigs and their impact on productivity measures would help drive improved preventative and control measures for these pathogens. This study was conducted with the objectives to: (1) describe patterns of infection dynamics of PRRSV and swine enteric coronaviruses, (2) determine the impact of introductions and timing of introductions of PRRSV and SeCoV on wean-to-market mortality, average daily gain, and feed conversion, and (3) compare the economic performance of groups of growing pigs with different timing of introductions and pathogen combinations of PRRSV and SeCoV. The pathogen status and timing of the introduction of PEDV, PDCoV, and PRRSV for 75 groups of pigs that originated from negative sow farms were determined by collecting eight oral fluid samples every two weeks per group of pigs and tested by RT-PCR. The timing of introduction for those pathogens was categorized as nursery (3–10 weeks of age), early finisher (11–21 weeks of age), and late finisher (22–33 weeks of age.) Regression analyses were used to compare mortality, average daily gain (ADG), and feed conversion (FC) between pathogen combinations and time of pathogen introductions. A production and economic model was used to determine differences in net profit per pig placed using least squares means of productivity differences from the regression analysis. Wild-type PRRSV was detected in 96 % of the groups of growing pigs, and 37 % became positive for SeCoV. Groups of pigs with multiple pathogens had significantly increased mortality compared to groups with single pathogen introductions. PRRSV introduction in the nursery or early finisher phase or SeCoV introduction in the nursery phase resulted in significantly higher mortality than later introductions, and nursery introductions of SeCoV impacted ADG and FC. Compared to negative groups, the net profit of groups with pathogen introductions was decreased due to increased mortality and reduced ADG and FC, with the most significant differences resulting from pigs with a nursery introduction of SeCoV. Overall, this study assessed the impact of multiple pathogen introductions and pathogen introduction timing on productivity measures and suggests the importance of implementing biosecurity control measures to prevent or delay introductions of multiple pathogens in growing pig populations to minimize their impact on wean-to-market productivity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 106720"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145302860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Global seroprevalence and prevalence of infection of influenza in dogs and cats: A systematic review and meta-analysis","authors":"Juan Carlos Ramos-Martínez ,&nbsp;Iván Ramos-Martínez ,&nbsp;Manuel Saavedra-Montañez ,&nbsp;Mayra Alejandra Martínez-González ,&nbsp;Sarai Santos-Paniagua ,&nbsp;Mayte Martínez-Aguirre ,&nbsp;Luis Alberto Hernández Osorio ,&nbsp;Ricardo Balam-Narváez ,&nbsp;Héctor Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes ,&nbsp;Sheila Irais Peña-Corona ,&nbsp;Iván Sánchez-Betancourt ,&nbsp;Edgar Gustavo Ramos-Martínez","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106716","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106716","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study aimed to estimate the prevalence and seroprevalence of influenza A virus in dogs and cats though a systematic review and meta-analysis was performed following PRISMA guidelines. A total of 79 studies in dogs and 34 in cats were included, encompassing 35,895 dogs and 2882 cats. Subgroup and meta-regression analyses were conducted. The pooled prevalence was <strong>12.04 % (95 % CI: 3.96 – 23.28)</strong> in dogs and <strong>1.73 % (95 % CI: 0.00 – 7.10)</strong> in cats, while seroprevalence was <strong>12.07 % (95 % CI: 4.4 – 22.49)</strong> in dogs and <strong>7.39 % (95 % CI: 3.17 – 13.12)</strong> in cats. Significant geographic differences were observed, with higher prevalence in the Americas and Asia compared to Europe. Additionally, prevalence in dogs was higher during spring-summer than in autumn-winter. Meta-regression analysis did not reveal significant associations between prevalence and factors such as symptoms presence, ownership status, or geographic region. However, the high heterogeneity among studies suggests that unaccounted variables, such as detection methods, may contribute to results variability. These findings underscore the epidemiological relevance of canine and feline influenza and highlight the need for ongoing surveillance to monitor geographic and temporal trends.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 106716"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145302807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evaluating clinical mastitis in four dimensions: Definition and correlation analysis of the production, somatic cell count, clinical and pathogen severity","authors":"Yifan Song ,&nbsp;Lore D’Anvers ,&nbsp;Martin Julius Gote ,&nbsp;Katleen Geerinckx ,&nbsp;Sofie Piepers ,&nbsp;Sarne De Vliegher ,&nbsp;Ines Adriaens ,&nbsp;Ben Aernouts","doi":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106717","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.prevetmed.2025.106717","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Assessing clinical mastitis (CM) severity plays a crucial role in mastitis control. The current method for assessing CM severity mainly considers clinical symptoms while a comprehensive approach is lacking. This study aims to explore CM severity in different dimensions. We collected data on 129 CM cases detected by automatic milking system (AMS) and confirmed by herdsman from three farms in Belgium (n = 2) and the Netherlands (n = 1). The CM severity was assessed in four dimensions: production (maximum relative milk loss for the inflamed and uninflamed quarters separately), somatic cell count (deviation from cow-level baseline), clinical (mild, moderate, severe clinical symptoms), and pathogen (cultures from the inflamed quarter). We explored the relations between these dimensions and examined the impact of farm, parity, and lactation stage (LS). Our findings revealed that severity dimensions were positively correlated, with correlations from 0.30 to 0.50. The strongest correlation between dimensions occurred between the production dimension in inflamed and uninflamed quarters. Severity in the somatic cell count dimension exhibited the stronger correlation with production severity for uninflamed quarters and pathogen severity compared to other dimensions, and the clinical dimension showed the strongest association with the production dimension for uninflamed quarters. Additionally, farm, parity, and LS were found to influence both the severity within certain dimensions and the interrelationships among them. These results suggest that, although CM severity scores across the four dimensions are positively correlated, clear variations exist. Combining the four scores could help to capture the full scope of CM by simultaneously assessing the severity of cases across these dimensions. Despite potential detection bias in the CM cases, our findings provide an opportunity to develop a novel CM severity scoring system that could optimize treatment decisions and promote sustainability of the dairy sector.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":20413,"journal":{"name":"Preventive veterinary medicine","volume":"246 ","pages":"Article 106717"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145302764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}