Aphthouszition, Vaccination and Serotherapy

Aphthouszition is an old, primordial, disease management system used for herd management in ancient times. It is a technique which has found some use in some countries of the world where economy of herd management is of poor. It is used in a poor resource setting and has been useful to some extent in other fields of veterinary science. Aphthouszition is the technique in which the saliva of the aphthous lesion from diseased cow e.g. Foot and Mouth disease, Vesicular stomatitis disease, is taken by a clean cloth wrapped around the technician's hand and is passed on to the other healthy or presumably carrier animals. In this way, all the cows in the herd are affected by the same disease all at once and medication for the whole herd is done at the same time. After convalescence, all the animals affected are recovered all together and come to production all at once. This results in high antibody titer and resistance against the disease spans over a long period of time. This treatment protocol is a mixture of vaccination and synchronization. The diseased herd is synchronized for disease, treatment, and recovery. This technique although very dangerous and expansive has to its credit time utilization and marketing efficiency achieved with the prescribed time period. The only problem is that for more infectious or lethal diseases it may cause high morbidity and high mortality in the herd and may be hazardous for those surrounding animals. This technique can not be outlawed completely because for some diseases with low mortality and morbidity rates, which are less invasive, this technique can be considered useful, especially if vaccination fails. An example can be taken from poultry farming like breeder farming of broiler chicks that use 10-20% litter from old breeder stock having the circoviridae (CAV) for the new broiler breeder so that the new flock gets infected and high antibody titers can be achieved prior to egg laying.

Vaccination is an idea to inject an entity to elicit an immune response against that agent in the animals. An example can be taken to inject oil based or gel based killed viruses of FMD to animals to cause an increase in the protection against FMDV by increasing antibody titer and/or cause an effective blockade of cell-mediated immunity against FMDV. This by far is the most effective method controlling diseases.

 

Serotherapy    

This technique is the use of serum or whole blood to control the disease. If we take an example, the protective titer of antibodies against FMDV of animals is ranged at 32 complement fixation units (CFTU) and the protective titer of FMDV recovered animals is around 64 CFTU the treatment becomes very simple. As a matter of fact, 1200-1500 CFTU are required to be injected to cattle affected by FMDV to treat it within 24 hours. If the commercial dairy farmers keep some of their male calves and hyperimmunize against FMDV by regular vaccination they will have a pool of serotherapy at their farms.