Summary of the article “Experimental Brucella Abortus Infection in Wolves” S.V. Tessaro and L.B. Forbes
Abstract
Four young male wolves were infected with Brucella abortus (B. abortus) biovar 1 from a bison in Wood Buffalo national Park Canada. Two other wolves served as negative control. B. abortus is a disease that causes premature expulsion or abortion of the fetus, and is very prevalent in cattle and sheep. The purpose of this study was to see if it could be passed from one herd to another through the largest predator of the area. The wolves didn’t show signs of the disease, but did develop the antibodies for brucella, and sporadically small amounts were found in the fecal matter. The amounts found were insignificant compared to…show more content… They also examined fecal samples from all of the wolves for parasites, and clinical hematology and chemistry was done at the beginning and the end of the experiment. (Studying the makeup of the blood and chemicals in the body) The wolves were started on a diet of dog food, and at 60 days the wolves were separated from each other and randomly assigned to three groups. All six were negative for brucellosis and the start of the experiment and were 78 days old when they started the official experiment Group 1 served as a control, and group two and three were given an oral dose of colony forming units of B. abortus. Each group was kept in a separate room and weighed periodically. Buccal swabs were collected for the first three days and urine samples were collected for the first nine. All feces was collected from each wolf until day 10 and once a day after that for bacterial culture, blood was also collected twice weekly for two weeks and once a week after that. They checked all samples collected for antibodies in various methods such as the buffered plate antigen test (BPAT), the brewer’s card test (BCT), standard tube agglutination test (STAT), and complement fixation test (CFT). A positive cutoff was established for each type of test, a STAT result of > 125 was considered positive…show more content… The clinical chemistry and hematology values were unremarkable at the start and end of the experiment. Twenty colonies of B. abortus were recovered at 12 hrs. from the swab of wolf 2a, one colony was recovered from wolf 3b and three were recovered from 3a on day two. Only one urine sample came up with positive results, it was determined that the bacteria was transferred during grooming, and it didn’t travel there through the body so quickly. Small amounts of the bacteria was found in sporadically in the fecal matter for up to 50 days. All of the infected wolves were testing positive by day ten and remained positive for the remainder of the experiment. No lesions were found in any of the wolves during necropsy and no histologic lesions were evident. B. abortus was recovered from the thymus spleen liver and lymph nodes from one or more of the experimental wolves, but none was found in the kidneys lungs, brain, testicles, urinary bladder or synovial
