Equine Brucellosis: Review on Epidemiology, Pathogenesis, Clinical Signs, Prevention and Control
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Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences, December - 2016; Volume – 4(Spl-4-EHIDZ) Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences http://www.jebas.org ISSN No. 2320 – 8694 EQUINE BRUCELLOSIS: REVIEW ON EPIDEMIOLOGY, PATHOGENESIS, CLINICAL SIGNS, PREVENTION AND CONTROL Kumaragurubaran Karthik1,*, Govinthasamy Prabakar2, Ramasamy Bharathi1, Sandip Kumar Khurana3 and Kuldeep Dhama2 1Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chennai- 51, India 2Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, Bareilly, U.P., India 3NRCE, Hisar, Haryana, India Received – November 03, 2016; Revision – November 25, 2016; Accepted – December 02, 2016 Available Online – December 04, 2016 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18006/2016.4(Spl-4-EHIDZ).S151.S160 KEYWORDS ABSTRACT Brucellosis Brucellosis is one of the major zoonotic diseases that affect several domestic animals, wild animals and also marine mammals. Though there is no specific Brucella sp. that can affect horses, B. abortus and B. Equine suis can affect horses naturally and B. canis experimental infection has also been reported in equines. Brucellosis in equines is characterized by two conditions namely Poll evil and fistulous withers. B. abortus Organism has its predilection for joints, ligaments and tendons in case of equines and causes inflammatory conditions leading to formation of fistula. Equine brucellosis has been documented from Poll evil several parts of the world and prevalence has been reported time to time mostly based on serological diagnosis. Diagnosis of brucellosis mainly depends on serological methods though isolation of the Fistulous withers organism is the gold standard. Due to hazardous nature of the pathogen, tests like Rose Bengal plate agglutination test, Standard tube agglutination test and other serological assays are commonly LAMP employed. Isothermal amplification assay like LAMP are gaining momentum these years due to swiftness in diagnosis of the pathogen. LAMP with high specificity and sensitivity for detection of Brucella spp. and also B. abortus has been developed in the recent years. Prevention and control of brucellosis is of utmost important to halt the spread of the organism to other animals and human. Trauma is a major reason for predisposition of poll evil and fistulous withers hence proper fitting of saddle will help to prevent the disease. Housing and feeding the horses separately can prevent spread of disease from cattle. The present review discusses equine brucellosis, its epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical signs along with appropriate prevention and control strategies to be adapted. All the article published by Journal of Experimental * Corresponding author Biology and Agricultural Sciences is licensed under a E-mail: [email protected] (Kumaragurubaran Karthik) Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License Based on a work at www.jebas.org. Peer review under responsibility of Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences. Production and Hosting by Horizon Publisher India [HPI] (http://www.horizonpublisherindia.in/ ). All _________________________________________________________rights reserved. Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences http://www.jebas.org S152 Karthik et al 1 Introduction countries like Australia, Canada, Japan, Israel and New Zealand have controlled the disease (Nicoletti, 2007). Reports Brucellosis is a major zoonotic disease caused by the shows that age, breed and sex specificity does not exist for bacterium of the genus Brucella of which several species has brucellosis in equine though more cases are documented in been listed to cause disease in domestic and wild animals. horses above 3 years of age (Nicoletti, 2007). History shows that the disease was first identified in Malta in the year 1887 by Sir David Bruce who isolated Brucella 2 Epidemiology melitensis, the then Micrococcus melitensis from a soldier died due to Maltese fever (Godfroid et al., 2005). Recent years has Three species of Brucella namely B. abortus, B. suis and B. seen this bacterium as a pathogen causing disease in sea canis have been incriminated to infect horses, of which B. mammals thus showing the long journey of this pathogen from abortus and B. suis have been reported with natural infection Malta to Marine. There are eleven Brucella species namely B. and B. canis infection has been reported with experimental abortus (cattle), B. melitensis (sheep and goats), B. ovis infection (Hagler et al., 1982). (sheep), B. suis (hogs), B. canis (dogs), B. neotomae (wood rats), B. microti, B. maris, B. ceti and B. pinnipedialis (marine Brucella antibodies have been reported from several parts of mammals) and B. inopinata (isolated recently from women the world at various time frames showing that horses get breast implant) (Verger et al., 1987; Foster et al., 2007; Scholz infected from other animals. A study in Brazil was conducted et al., 2008). where 123 crossbred cart horse serum samples were collected from a period April 2005 to June 2006. These samples were These eleven Brucella spp. do not follow the strict rule towards subjected to Rose Bengal Plate agglutination Test (RBPT) host specificity as they can infect other animals and also which showed eight animals (6.5%) to be positive for brucella human beings hence this pathogen is considered as an antibodies. This study did not report isolation of the pathogen important zoonotic organism. B. abortus and B. suis affects and the seropositive animals did not show any clinical wild animals and reports regarding B. melitensis infection in manifestation of the disease (Antunes et al., 2013). A wild animals are less (Rhyan, 2000; Godfroid & Kasbohrer, multispecies farm in Nigeria comprising of different livestock 2002). There is no specific Brucella sp. that can cause disease species like cattle, horse, goat and sheep was investigated for particularly in horses. All the documented reports of B. abortus infection status. This study revealed that all the brucellosis in horse are mainly by the cattle pathogen, B. seven horses under the study were found positive by RBPT. abortus and to a milder extent B. suis biovar 3 (Lucero et al., Vaginal samples from 6 horses were subjected for isolation of 2008; Colavita et al., 2016). B. abortus which showed that two samples were positive for B. abortus. This study is the first report of isolation of the Members of the genus Brucella are facultative intracellular pathogen from non clinical cases from horse (Bertu et al., gram negative cocco-bacilli or short rods measuring around 0.6 2015). The report of this study warrants attention as disease to 1.5 μm long and 0.5 to 0.7 μm width. Brucella genus neither free horses can also play role in transmission of the pathogen form capsules nor spores nor motile though carry the genes for to other animals and also to human. Several other studies have motility (except the chemotactic system that helps in been conducted earlier in Nigeria to investigate the presence of assembling a functional flagellum) (Fretin et al., 2005). brucellosis in horses which documented 8.4% (14 positive of Brucella genus is classified phylogenetically within the α2 166 animals) and 14.7% (11 samples out of 75 horses) which subdivision of Proteobacteria which comprises of were lesser compared to the recent survey documenting 100% Agrobacterium, Bartonella, Ochrobactrum, Rhizobium, positivity (Bale & Kwanashie, 1984; Ehizibolo et al., 2011). Rhodobacter, and Rickettsia (Moreno et al., 1990). Genome of Multispecies housing can increase the possibility of disease B. abortus has two circular chromosomes of 2.1 Mb and 1.5 spread. Already there are established reports that horse to horse Mb size without plasmids (Michaux et al., 1993; Michaux- or other animals is a less likely event and these animals do not Charachon et al., 1997). Recent years has seen the completion excrete the organism (Corbel & Henry, 1983; Macmillan & of genome of B. abortus (Sanchez et al., 2001), B. melitensis Cockrem, 1985). Sadiq et al. (2013) reported 5.5% sero- (GenBank NC 003317 and NC 003318) (DelVecchio et al., positivity of brucellosis by RBPT and Microtiter Serum 2002) and B. suis (GenBank NC 002969) thus increasing the Agglutination Test in donkeys from Borno and Yobe states of opportunity for understanding the pathogenicity of Brucella. Nigeria. Brucellosis mainly causes reproductive diseases in various A very recent study conducted on the Mambilla plateau of animals, and in horses the clinical manifestation is termed as Taraba state, Nigeria showed 16% prevalence of brucellosis "poll-evil" or "fistulous withers" due to the inflammation of and adult horses were affected more that young animals (Ardo supraspinous bursa and connective tissue, leading to abscess & Abubakar, 2016). Another study conducted in the same formation and fistulation in the affected region and Taraba state of Jalingo region showed 7 animals out of 90 adult occasionally abortions and other reproductive problems are horses screened by RBPT (Ardo et al., 2016). also reported (Denny, 1972). B. abortus has been reported worldwide causing infection in domestic animals though some _________________________________________________________ Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences http://www.jebas.org Equine Brucellosis: Review on epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical signs, prevention and control. S153 Studies conducted in Iran also reported isolation of B. abortus few hours kills the bacteria and they are also