Bovine tuberculosis

 CAB International 2018. Bovine Tuberculosis

58 (eds M. Chambers, S. Gordon, F. Olea-Popelka, P. Barrow)

• Email: [email protected]

5.1 Bovine Tuberculosis

Mycobacterium bovis is a highly ‘successful’
pathogen with a worldwide distribution (Bezos
et al., 2014). In several countries, bovine tuber-
culosis (TB) remains a major and costly infec-
tious disease of cattle and other domesticated,
feral and wild animals (Pollock and Neill, 2002;
Mathews et al., 2006; Carslake et al., 2011). It is
considered the most complex and costly multi-
species endemic disease currently facing the
government, veterinary profession and farming
industry in the UK and Ireland at least ( Reynolds,
2006; Sheridan, 2011), where it impacts nega-
tively on-farm profitability, trade and the welfare
of affected farming families. It can also decimate
years of livestock genetic improvement.

5.2 Rationale

In order to improve bovine TB control, it remains
fundamental to describe and explain the basic
biological processes of maintenance and trans-
mission. However, despite substantial research,
surprisingly little is known about transmission
routes. Consequently, there is a continuing need
to better understand bovine TB epidemiology
and the interaction within and between cattle,
wildlife and other potential environmental

reservoirs. The ability to take advantage of

structured surveillance and reproducibly dis-

criminate M. bovis isolates into different molecu-

lar types has the potential to clarify sources of

infection, major routes of transmission and

potentially their relative importance. The meth-

ods, practices and data have essentially two

applications: (i) to investigate important aspects

of bovine TB ecology, evolution and epidemiol-

ogy using descriptive, analytical and disease

mathematical modelling studies; and (ii) to

inform TB outbreak investigations and contact

tracings (Benton et al., 2014). There is substan-

tial spend on components of current bovine TB

control programmes, such as disease tracing

and contiguous testing, and analysis of local

molecular typing data has the potential to assess

their efficacy, to monitor control and future

interventions.

5.3 The Bacteria that Cause

Tuberculosis

M. bovis is a member of the closely related

M. tuberculosis complex (MTC) mycobacteria

(Brosch et al., 2002; Coll et al., 2014a, b). On a

global scale, the MTC can be subdivided using

genome-enabled tests into discrete lineages that

show strong phylogeographical localization to

5 Mycobacterium bovis Molecular

Typing and Surveillance

Robin A. Skuce,1,2,* Andrew W. Byrne,1,2 Angela Lahuerta-Marin^1

and Adrian Allen^1

(^1) Veterinary Sciences Division, Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, Belfast, UK;
(^2) School of Biological Sciences, Queens University Belfast, Belfast, UK