Abstract
Epizootic bovine abortion (EBA), commonly referred to as "foothill abortion, has been, and continues to be, the leading cause of abortion in beef cattle in the state of California. Development of a reproducible method for experimental disease transmission in 2000 facilitated efforts to identify the etiologic agent. Inoculation of naive pregnant heifers with cryopreserved fetal thymus homogenates, derived from select EBA-diseased fetuses, provided a reliable mechanism to predictably transmit the pathogen to the developing fetus with concomitant development of classical EBA. The bacterial agent of EBA (aoEBA) gains entrance to the developing fetus across the placenta from the infected dam. An experimental vaccine is currently being field-tested with encouraging results. The vaccine is cryopreserved live virulent bacteria derived from spleen cells of aoEBA-infected severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID) mice; the vaccine cannot be safely administered to pregnant cattle.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Bovine Reproduction |
| Publisher | Wiley Blackwell |
| Pages | 562-566 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Volume | 9781118470831 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781118833971, 9781118470831 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 3 2014 |
Keywords
- Bacterial agent
- Beef cattle
- EBA-diseased fetuses
- Epizootic bovine abortion (EBA)
- Etiologic agent
- Heifers
- Pregnant cattle
- Severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID) mice
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- veterinary(all)