Mitogen- and antigen-induced interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) responses of peripheral blood leucocytes from cervids were evaluated by a commercial whole-blood assay. The assay was applied to Mycobacterium bovis-infected white-tailed deer and reindeer, M bovis BCG-vaccinated white-tailed deer and elk, and unvaccinated, uninfected white-tailed deer, fallow deer, elk and reindeer. The responses of the...

Tuberculosis due to Mycobacterium bovis affects both captive and free-ranging Cervidae in the United States. Various animal models have been developed to study tuberculosis of both humans and animals. Generally, tuberculosis is transmitted by aerosol and oral routes. Models of aerosol exposure of large animals to M. bovis are uncommon. In order to develop a reliable method of aerosol exposure o...

Priming neonatal calves at birth with a Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine and boosting with a DNA vaccine consisting of plasmids encoding mycobacterial antigens Hsp65, Hsp70, and Apa or the reverse prime-boost sequence induced similar levels of protection against experimental challenge with Mycobacterium bovis. When M. bovis was isolated from a thoracic lymph node follo...

Bovine tuberculosis (BTB), a chronic disease of mammals caused by Mycobacterium bovis, is a threat to South African wildlife. It has been reported that African buffaloes (Syncerus caffer) are reservoir hosts of BTB in South African wildlife populations. This study reports on the molecular identification and typing of 31 M. bovis isolates collected between 1993 and 2008, mainly from buffaloes b...

Several studies suggest that synergisms between Mycoplasma bovis and other microorganisms might exacerbate disease outcome of bovine mycoplasmosis. Screening several bovine cell types to assess their potential use as in vitro infection models for M. bovis, it was observed that a widely used cell line of bovine macrophages (Bomac cells) is in fact persistently infected with bovine viral diarrhea...

OBJECTIVES To screen novel small molecule compounds for inhibition of Mycoplasma bovis growth and to characterize their activity in terms of dose-dependency and ability to function in milk. METHODS Using a tetrazolium salt cytotoxicity assay, 480 natural compounds were screened to determine which of the small molecules have the potential to become therapeutic options for M. bovis prevention a...

The possibility of using BCG — a Mycobacterium bovis strain of attenuated virulence for PPD production instead of a virulent strain of M. bovis has been considered to avoid the biological risks involved in the procedure. The potency and specificity of a PPD tuberculin prepared from BCG was compared in guinea pigs with that of PPD produced from strain AN5 (two batches), a virulent strain of M. b...

Bioinformatics tools have the potential to accelerate research into the design of vaccines and diagnostic tests by exploiting genome sequences. The aim of this study was to assess whether in silico analysis could be combined with in vitro screening methods to rapidly identify peptides that are immunogenic during Mycobacterium bovis infection of cattle. In the first instance the M. bovis-derived...

Mycobacterium bovis is the cause of tuberculosis in animals and sometimes humans. Many developed nations have long-standing programmes to eradicate tuberculosis in livestock, principally cattle. As disease prevalence in cattle decreases these efforts are sometimes impeded by passage of M. bovis from wildlife to cattle. In epidemiological terms, disease can persist in some wildlife species, crea...

Wildlife reservoirs ofMycobacterium bovis represent serious obstacles to the eradication of tuberculosis in domestic livestock. In Michigan, SA tuberculous white-tailed deer transmit M. bovis to cattle. One approach in dealing with this wildlife reservoir is to vaccinate deer in order o interrupt the cycle of deer to deer and deer to cattle transmission. Thirty-one white-tailed deer were assign...