Bacterial and Viral Rodent-borne Infections on Poultry Farms. An Attempt at a Systematic Review

INTRODUCTION: Rodents are quite common at livestock production sites. Their adaptability, high reproductive capacity and omnivorousness make them apt to become a source of disease transmission to humans and animals. Rodents can serve as mechanical vectors or active shedders of many bacteria and viruses, and their transmission can occur through direct contact, or indirectly through contaminated food and water or by the arthropods which parasitise infected rodents. This review paper summarises how rodents spread infectious diseases in poultry production. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The aim of this review was to use PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) principles to meta-analyse the available data on this topic. Three databases – PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus – and grey literature were searched for papers published from inception to July 2022 using the established keywords. RESULTS: An initial search identified 2,999 articles that met the criteria established by the keywords. This number remained after removing 597 articles that were repeated in some databases. The articles were searched for any mention of specific bacterial and viral pathogens. CONCLUSION: The importance of rodents in the spread of bacterial diseases in poultry has been established, and the vast majority of such diseases involved Salmonella, Campylobacter, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus (MRSA), Pasteurella, Erysipelothrix or Yersinia infections. Rodents also play a role in the transmission of viruses such as avian influenza virus, avian paramyxovirus 1, avian gammacoronavirus or infectious bursal disease virus, but knowledge of these pathogens is very limited and requires further research to expand it.