SUMMARY In this study, Coxiella burnetii seroprevalence was assessed for dairy and non-dairy sheep farm residents in The Netherlands for 2009-2010. Risk factors for seropositivity were identified for non-dairy sheep farm residents. Participants completed farm-based and individual questionnaires. In addition, participants were tested for IgG and IgM C. burnetii antibodies using immunofluorescent...

We researched the spread of Brucella ovis (B. ovis) infection in sheep during 2002 and 2003 in Croatia. A total of 30,635 sheep blood samples were examined using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In 2002, 1014 out of 14,404 examined sheep blood samples (7%) from six counties gave positive reactions while 2060 (14.3%) were found suspicious. In 2003, 638 out of 16,221 examined sheep ...

An attenuated live bluetongue virus (AL-BTV) serotype 8 vaccine of South African origin was evaluated for its ability to protect sheep against challenge with a European BTV-8 isolated from an outbreak. Two groups of sero-negative sheep were vaccinated with either a single or booster vaccination and challenged subcutaneously 28 days following vaccination. Groups of vaccinated challenged sheep sh...

We attempted an oral rush desensitization with mixed cow and sheep milk in a 6-year-old boy who had had adverse reactions to cow and goat milks. Skin prick tests and specific immunoglobulin (Ig) E to cow, sheep and goat milks were positive. The double-blind, placebo-controlled food challenge with cow milk was positive too. He underwent a 12-day sublingual-oral desensitization treatment with mix...

Sheep is an important livestock in the world for meat, dairy and wool production. The third version of sheep reference genome has been recently assembled, but sheep DNA methylome has not been profiled yet. In this study, we report the comprehensive sheep methylome with 94.38% cytosine coverage at single base resolution by sequencing DNA samples from Longissimus dorsi of dizygotic Sunit sheep, w...

Grazing by large herbivores may negatively affect bird populations. This is of great conservation concern in areas with intensive sheep grazing. Sheep management varies substantially between regions, but no study has been performed in less intensively grazed systems. In a fully replicated, landscape scale experiment with three levels of sheep grazing, we tested whether the abundance and diversi...

This paper examines the known immunological and genetic factors associated with sheep resistance to infection by Haemonchus contortus. Such resistance is an inheritable genetic trait (h(2), 0.22-0.63) associated with certain sheep breeds. Resistant sheep do not completely reject the disease; they only harbor fewer parasites than susceptible sheep and therefore have a lower fecal egg count. Prot...

A survey incorporating field and abattoir studies was carried out on the prevalence of Dicrocoelium dendriticum in sheep and goats in the Kangra valley of Himachal Pradesh (India). Coprological studies on these migratory animals revealed that 8.1% of sheep and 4.1% of goats were positive for dicrocoeliosis, with a mean number of eggs per gram of faeces (EPG) of 702.1 for sheep and 566.7 for goa...

Scrapie is transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), which causes neurological signs in sheep, but confirmatory diagnosis is usually made postmortem on examination of the brain for TSE-associated markers like vacuolar changes and disease-associated prion protein (PrP(Sc)). The objective of this study was to evaluate whether testing of brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEPs) at two dif...

Classical scrapie is an environmentally transmissible prion disease of sheep and goats. Prions can persist and remain potentially infectious in the environment for many years and thus pose a risk of infecting animals after re-stocking. In vitro studies using serial protein misfolding cyclic amplification (sPMCA) have suggested that objects on a scrapie-affected sheep farm could contribute to di...