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Quantifying badger exposure and the risk of bovine tuberculosis for cattle herds in county Kilkenny, Ireland.
- Source :
-
Preventive veterinary medicine [Prev Vet Med] 2006 Jul 17; Vol. 75 (1-2), pp. 34-46. Date of Electronic Publication: 2006 Feb 20. - Publication Year :
- 2006
-
Abstract
- The objectives of the study were to quantify the levels of badger exposure for cattle and to test the hypothesis that increased badger exposure does not increase the risk of bovine tuberculosis (BTB) in a herd. Information that became available from the targeted removal of badgers over the study period, and from a badger-removal project in county Kilkenny, during 1996-1999 was used. The specific location of cattle within each farm, and the length of time that cattle spent in each farm field during the grazing season, and in the barnyard during winter, was used to build an exposure coefficient to quantify the amount of badger exposure that cattle encountered either on pasture or in the barn. The study design was a matched case-control study in which the control herds were selected using incidence density sampling. During the 4-year study period, 543 badgers were removed and of these 96 badgers were classified as tuberculosis positive; 96 BTB herd breakdowns occurred. There was a significant association between case herds and having a higher badger sett exposure coefficient during 1996-1998. No significant association between case herds and having a higher exposure coefficient based on the number of badgers, or the number of tuberculous badgers, during September 1997-December 1999 was found.
- Subjects :
- Animals
Case-Control Studies
Cattle
Cattle Diseases prevention & control
Chi-Square Distribution
Ireland epidemiology
Longitudinal Studies
Risk Factors
Tuberculosis transmission
Tuberculosis, Bovine prevention & control
Cattle Diseases epidemiology
Disease Reservoirs
Mustelidae
Mycobacterium bovis
Tuberculosis veterinary
Tuberculosis, Bovine epidemiology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 0167-5877
- Volume :
- 75
- Issue :
- 1-2
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Preventive veterinary medicine
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 16488029
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2006.01.014