The Survival of Haemophilus Somnus on Transport Swabs

Abstract

Since its initial description (4), Haemophilus somnus has been implicated as an important opportunist pathogen of cattle and of particular relevance is its role in bovine respiratory disease (5). Recovery of the organism from field specimens is often difficult and a number of selective media have been described (1,2) which can enhance it, but the manner in which the specimen is taken and subsequently treated can significantly affect the likelihood of successful recovery of this bacterium. It has been shown experimentally that the length of survival of H. somnus following inoculation into both bovine secretions (3) and alginate swabs (1) is temperature dependent. Since swabs taken from field specimens may need to be sent some distance to a laboratory before primary culture we report here the effect of storage temperature and composition of the transport medium on the rate of recovery of H. somnus from experimentally inoculated laryngeal swabs.