The incidence of bovine tuberculosis and its public health hazards in a dairy cattle station in Iraq

Abstract

Bovine tuberculosis (TB) considered one of the important zoonotic diseases in the world specially in economic and public health field. The aim of this study is to determine the incidence of bovine TB in a dairy cattle station in Iraq, also the hazards on public health. The study was conducted on 850 cows and on 25 workers and veterinary doctors in the station. The comparative intradermal tuberculin test (CITT) was done on the cows and the single tuberculin test was done on the workers using the mammalian antigen. 260 Serum samples were taken from cows and 25 serum from workers and submitted to ELISA test, it was found that 43.88% of cows were positive to comparative tuberculin test and 51.92% were positive to ELISA, while in workers the positive results were 36% and 32% in tuberculin and ELIZA respectively. 45 milk, 45 nasal swabs, 20 liver, 18 spleen, 30 lung and 30 lymph nodes from cattle and 25 sputum samples from workers were taken for bacterial isolation on Lowenstein- Jensen and stone brink media and the tubercle bacilli were isolated from 20 milk sample, 11 nasal swabs, 13 livers, 10 spleens, 23 lungs and 26 lymph nodes and 103 Mycobacterium isolates were diagnosed according to the biochemical tests results as 100 M bovis and 2 Runyon IV mycobacterium and one isolate as Runyon III. The presence of M bovis in milk samples represent an important factor in infection of humans and other animals.