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. 2019 Jun 11;15(1):194.
doi: 10.1186/s12917-019-1924-7.

Serology for Neosporosis, Q fever and Brucellosis to assess the cause of abortion in two dairy cattle herds in Ecuador

Darwin Changoluisa  1 , Ismar A Rivera-Olivero  2 , Gustavo Echeverria  3 , Miguel Angel Garcia-Bereguiain  4   5 , Jacobus H de Waard  6   7 ; working group “Applied Microbiology” of the School of Biological Sciences and Engineering at Yachay Tech University
Collaborators, Affiliations

Serology for Neosporosis, Q fever and Brucellosis to assess the cause of abortion in two dairy cattle herds in Ecuador

Darwin Changoluisa et al. BMC Vet Res. .

Abstract

Background: Determining the infectious cause of abortion in cattle is difficult. This case-control study was set up to investigate the infectious causes of abortion by determining the seroprevalence of three reproductive pathogens in dairy cattle in Ecuador and their association with abortion: Brucella abortus, Neospora caninum and Coxiella burnetii.

Results: Ninety-five blood samples were obtained from cows that had experienced a mid- or late gestation abortion of their first calf and seventy-seven samples from a control group of cows with the same age that did not experience abortion problems. No antibodies were detected for B. abortus in any of the serum samples, but a high seroprevalence for both C. burnetii (52.9%) and N. caninum infection (21.5%) was found in group of cows. The seroprevalence of N. caninum infection in cattle that had experienced abortions was significantly higher (p < 0.05) than the seroprevalence in the control cows on one of the cattle farms, but no association between abortion and seropositivity for C. burnetii was found.

Conclusion: We conclude that Neosporosis plays an important role in the epidemiology of abortion on one cattle farm, but that Q fever is apparently not an important cause for abortion in this setting.

Keywords: Brucella; Brucellosis; Cattle; Coxiella; Ecuador; Neospora; Neosporosis; Q fever.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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