MC – Foot and mouth disease
Synonyms
No known synonym
Name of the disease in English
Foot and mouth disease
The disease in brief
Category 1 health danger: An alert from the veterinary services of the Ministry of Agriculture is essential for each suspicion. If the suspicion is solid, stop your tour of the breeders, go home, take a thorough shower and recommend that the breeders stay at home, without welcoming visitors.
It is the most feared contagious disease for animals with an even number of hooves (= artiodactyls: ruminants, pigs); the disease is caused by 7 serotypes of viruses: O,A,C, SAT1, SAT2,SAT3, Asia3. The disease has been eradicated in Europe, but it is present in Africa and Asia and its power of extreme contagion over long distances by wind means that it remains a real threat to our livestock.
Morbidity is close to 100%, mortality is very variable (2-20%). Infected cattle are the source of infection, which can be transmitted through contaminated objects, livestock effluent, infected carcasses or meat or their residues (swill, distributed to pigs).
The virus is resistant in the external environment, resistant to freezing and to many disinfectants (only caustic soda gives solid results); the virus is transmitted by aerosols, and clouds of viruses can travel up to 250km before reinfecting animals.
Clinic & diagnosis
The disease is suspected by observing either drooling cattle, locomotor problems, or teat lesions:
– A batch of cattle which drooling, with fever
–Uspreading dysphagia in the herd in a few days with lesions of different aspects depending on the stage of evolution with fever
– Mouth sores with fever: These are vesicles (containing a clear liquid), or canker sores on the lips or the rim (primary lesion or ruptured lesion), or damage to the skin of the lips or the rim secondary to the rupture of the vesicles.
– Interdigital lesions such as oozing or cracking of the skin or necrosis of subcutaneous interdigital tissues in febrile cattle and associated with:
-A collective evolution or slaughtered cattle
-Several members affected
-Drooling cattle
– Lesions on the skin of the teats vesicle type (containing a clear liquid) where the epidermis has disappeared leaving superficial erosion and associated with:
-Fever,
-Or a collective evolution or slaughtered cattle
-Or oral or foot lesions (see above)
-Or drooling cattle
Typical sign of the disease
No description
Pictures
See below
Diagnostic formulas
No description
Differential diagnosis
– Vesicular stomatitis N274
– Bluetongue MC2
– Papular stomatitis DG10
– Stomatitis by foreign body or burn by caustic or stinging DG16
– Acute mucosal disease / acute BVD
– Gangrenous coryza RS31
- IBR RS18
Confirm a suspicion?
It is the authorities (DD(CS)PP, ex-DSV) who will take charge of the confirmation operations, with samples, analyses, etc.
Do not leave the suspect breeding farm or return home depending on the circumstances, but above all do not continue to visit breeding farms.
Prognosis and treatment
No specific treatment; on a humanitarian basis, treatment based on flunixin meglumine helps limit inflammation and pain without hindering viral isolation.
Prevention
It is the authorities (DD(CS)PP, ex-DSV) who define the control measures:
– The first practical measures aim to prohibit entry and exit from the affected farm; but also to reduce the movements of animals, certain goods and people in an area of several kilometers around the home.
– If confirmation arrives in a free country, the ruminants and pigs on the farm are slaughtered (without bloodshed); the carcasses and the milk produced are destroyed.
– Depending on the evolution of the epizootic, and the strategic choices of the moment, control is achieved only by culling outbreaks or by combining culling and vaccination.
References
-Veterinary Medicine-Pocket companion -9th Edition BLOOD DC-page 384
