Efficiency of a Live 316 F Strain Vaccine Against Paratuberculosis in Ruminants

Abstract

It is nearly a century ago that JOHNE and FROTHINGAM identified Mycobacterium para tuberculosis as the causative agent of PARATUBERCULOSIS, commonly named JOHNE'S DISEASE, in RUMINANTS. This disease is still, (and even more and more in some parts of the world), responsible for considerable economic losses to the dairy and beef cattle industry, related to reduced milk production, diarrhoea, emaciation, decreased fertility, and mortality (1,2,3,4).

The specificities of the epidemiology, the pathogeny and the diagnosis of this infection have made its control something difficult : e .g. the early contamination of the newborn calves, the late clinical expression of the disease in adult animals, the evolution of humoral and cellular indicators of the immune response in individually infected animals (5,6,7,8,9,10,11).

Propositions of control programs have been presented some years ago and recently updated (5). According to their authors, they rely on one or both of the following strategies : vaccination and/or sanitary measures.

The concept of vaccination has been developped by VALLEE and RINJARD (12,13) some 60 years ago. The following presentation wishes to expose the characteristics of a live 316F strain Mycobacterium paratuberculosis vaccine (***), and the results obtained in France (dept. des Cotes d 'Armor) when the use of this vaccine in newborn calves is associated with fecal culture in a large scale control program against PARATUBERCULOSIS in cattle.

(***) NEOPARASECa - RHONE MERIEUX - LYON - FRANCE