%0 Journal Article
%T Significant reduction in bacterial shedding and improvement in milk production in dairy farms after the use of a new inactivated paratuberculosis vaccine in a field trial
%A Ramon A Juste
%A Marta Alonso-Hearn
%A Elena Molina
%A Marivi Geijo
%A Patricia Vazquez
%A Iker A Sevilla
%A Joseba M Garrido
%J BMC Research Notes
%D 2009
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1756-0500-2-233
%X Fecal detection (n = 1829) and milking records (n = 2413) have been analyzed after two (5 herds) and four (1 herd) years of the beginning of the intervention. Shedder prevalence was reduced by 100% in three of the four vaccinated farms, 68% in the total of vaccinated animals and 46% in the two control farms. Total amount of MAP shed was reduced 77% in the vaccinated farms and 94% in the control farms. Overall milk production increased up to 3.9% after vaccination, while there was no significant difference in production after intervention in the non-vaccinated farms.MAP shedding reduction can be quickly accomplished both by vaccination and by testing and culling. However, vaccination appears to be a less expensive and more sustainable strategy since it required one single intervention and was also associated with an increase in milk production.Paratuberculosis or Johne's disease eradication programs based on the detection and culling of infected animals (testing and culling, T&C) have been relatively unsuccessful due to the low sensitivity of diagnostic tests and unending expenses for detection of infection in individual animals. Even though vaccination has been successfully used for over 30 years in the US and in the UK as well as in other countries, scientific reports on its efficacy are old and scarce in spite of having shown to yield higher benefit/cost ratios than T&C strategies [1,2].Near eradication of bovine tuberculosis in the Basque Country, as well as high prevalence of clinical cases of paratuberculosis in some farms, led the local Animal Health Authorities to support a vaccination trial in farms with a history of heavy clinical incidence. This trial was implemented as a field assay to test the efficacy of a new paratuberculosis vaccine specifically designed for use in cattle and that is based in whole cell heat-killed MAP (Silirum£¿, CZ Veterinaria, S.A., Porri£¿o, Spain) in an oil adjuvant. The objective of the present report is to evaluate its performanc
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/2/233