Cumulative Cure Rates for the Major Pathogens Causing Mastitis

Abstract

Approaches to clinical mastitis treatment that utilize elements of a cow's history (Lago et al, 2004) and culture information from the affected quarter (Hess et al, 2003), have recently been described. Perhaps an optimal approach to treatment would be obtained by combining these two methods. Pathogen-specific somatic cell count (SCC) patterns before and after clinical mastitis have been documented by De Haas et al (2002). SCC was low before Escherichia coli mastitis cases and cases where bacteria were not isolated, and decreased quickly after a rapid rise. However, SCC was already high before cases associated with Staphylococcus aureus and the streptococci, and remained high afterward. The objective of this paper was to document the distribution of clinical cow cases of mastitis due to different pathogens by SCC status prior to clinical mastitis (Premast SCC) and to analyze Cumulative Cure Rate (CCR) for each of these sub-groups.