Subclinical Mastitis in Dairy Cattle and Buffaloes

Hello VN--- Regarding your first question to diagnose sub-clinical/ clinical mastitis by boiling milk etc., I have never attempted such techniques, hence has no comments. Use of homeopathic medicines in mastitis are used by some practioners but I have no experience in this either. Treatment with citrate clearly cures mastitis and this therapy is based on scientific lines and tested with comparable results and there is no decline in milk yield as reported by your colleague with homeopathic medicine. Any other question please do ask.

with regards Jasmer

What are the results when we boil the milk and check whether milk clots do form on the test tube in (a)sub-clinical and (b)clinical mastitis cases?

Dr. Sundaresh a veterinarian has expressed orally when he suspects sub-clinical mastitis he has tried a homoeo drug Pulsatilla 200 30pills oral feeding 3 times a day. He says the alkaline pH do changes when tested with a pH paper. In few animals he has noticed a drop in the milk yield.

What I wish to know is there any drop in the milk yield after treating with sodium citrate though the animal responds clinically.

Dr. V.N.Viswanatha Reddy,
Former Professor Animal Reproduction,
Veterinary College Bangalore
(0)9448052640

The investigations undertaken were quite interesting and meaningful for application in the field under the prevalent circumstances nowadays. However, we would like to add our findings vis-a-vis the above. Out of 201 mastitis cases 48.75 % showed culturally positive infectious mastitis. How about the rest 51.25 %? Then culture sensitive and chemotherapy showed variable efficacy against mastitis cases.

We have been conducting studies on mastitis in bovines and published our results in journals of repute which could be viewed on internet ' Tri - Sodium citrate for the treatment of mastitis...'. To proceed further it is pointed out that basically mastitis is not an infectious disease but a metabolic problem. To conceptually and logically validate our observation we put it as under:

Citrate synthesized in udder plays a pivotal role in the buffer system by equiliberating Ca2+ and H+ thus maintains the pH(~6.50) of the nomal milk. Secondaly citrate sequesters Ca2+ in milk and maintains its fluidity through casein miscells. In normal milk of cow and buffalo the citrate concentration is arround 130-170mg/100ml of milk. In mastitic milk the pH is usually alkaline and ranges from 7-9.0 depending upon the severity of the damage. The citrate content of mastitis milk turns commonly very low which is well documented in the literature (from 40 - 80mg/100ml of milk). Whenever there is dyshomeostasis in synthesis in udder citrate everythig goes haywire i.e., the moderator effect of citrate in sequestring Ca2+ is disrupted and calcium becomes free and form flakes which behave like Lime and injure the secretory epithelium resulting in swelling of the injured area. Due to injury the " tight junctions" between blood and milk become compromised and leaky and there occurs swapping ions particularly Na, K, Cl, HCO3 Citrate etc., which equilizes the pH of milk and blood(7.40) i.e., alkaline. Injury and the alkaline media provides the most conducive milieus for the establishment of environmental pathogens which are usually isolated on culturing. But still the sterile mastitis 51.25% in above publication are thus accounted for. After the injury inflicted by the Free Calcium and establishment of pathogens an explosive inflammatory reaction is set-up and an array of defense mechanisms come to play their deffensive roles resulting in infectious mastitis. If untreated it progresses to bleeding/pus formation and so and so forth.

We have treated such cases by replenishing the deficiency of citrate with extraneous administeration of citrate orally or I/V. The dose we give 30gm of tri-Sodium citrate dissolved in about 250ml of water as drench till recovery which is usually 3-5days depending upon the severity of the damage. I/V dose is 5% tri-Sodium citrate in sterilized normal saline 50ml morning and evening which takes about 1-3 days for curing the mastitis cases. Moreover, this treatment is very effective against mastitis cases which refrectory to antibiotic treatments etc.

Kundan Singh Dhillon and Jasmer Singh