The virulence of Dichelobacter nodosus, measured by the elastase test, is an important predictor for virulent footrot diagnosis in New South Wales sheep flocks

Ovine footrot is a contagious bacterial disease that causes foot lesions, and depending on the virulence of the causative strains, may lead to severe underrunning of the hoof and lameness. Virulent footrot can be identified, treated and controlled more effectively than less virulent benign forms. The in vitro elastase test for virulence of the causative bacteria, Dichelobacter nodosus, has been used to support clinical diagnosis. However, not all laboratory-designated virulent D. nodosus strains cause clinical signs of virulent footrot. This study evaluated retrospectively how well the elastase test supported clinical footrot diagnosis in 150 sheep flocks examined for suspect footrot in New South Wales between August 2020 and December 2021. Flocks were included if measures of clinical disease, environmental conditions and the virulence of D. nodosus isolates were available. Variation in the elastase activity result between D. nodosus isolated from the same flock made bacterial virulence hard to interpret, but calculating the mean elastase rate for all isolates from the same flock made correlations between bacterial virulence and flock footrot diagnosis possible. Simplifying bacterial virulence into whether there were any elastase-positive D. nodosus isolates before 12 days increased the predictive value of elastase results for virulent diagnosis, compared with using the first day that any isolate was elastase positive or the percentage of elastase-positive isolates by 12 days, but not all clinically virulent flocks had isolates with elastase activity before 12 days. Logistic regression models were fitted to identify the minimum number of predictors for virulent footrot diagnosis, with models suggesting that virulent footrot diagnosis was best predicted by adding the elastase test result and environmental conditions to the prevalence of severe foot lesions (score 4 and 5). However, performing the same analysis with different breeds, ages of sheep and seasons might highlight other factors important in the diagnosis of virulent footrot.