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Investigating Farm Fragmentation as a Risk Factor for Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle Herds: A Matched Case-Control Study from Northern Ireland

Bovine tuberculosis remains a challenging endemic pathogen of cattle in many parts of the globe. Spatial clustering of Mycoacterium bovis molecular types in cattle suggests that local factors are the primary drivers of spread. Northern Ireland’s agricultural landscape is comprised of highly fragment...

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Autores principales: Milne, Georgina, Graham, Jordon, McGrath, John, Kirke, Raymond, McMaster, Wilma, Byrne, Andrew William
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8954255/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35335623
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pathogens11030299
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author Milne, Georgina
Graham, Jordon
McGrath, John
Kirke, Raymond
McMaster, Wilma
Byrne, Andrew William
author_facet Milne, Georgina
Graham, Jordon
McGrath, John
Kirke, Raymond
McMaster, Wilma
Byrne, Andrew William
author_sort Milne, Georgina
collection PubMed
description Bovine tuberculosis remains a challenging endemic pathogen of cattle in many parts of the globe. Spatial clustering of Mycoacterium bovis molecular types in cattle suggests that local factors are the primary drivers of spread. Northern Ireland’s agricultural landscape is comprised of highly fragmented farms, distributed across spatially discontinuous land parcels, and these highly fragmented farms are thought to facilitate localised spread. We conducted a matched case control study to quantify the risks of bovine tuberculosis breakdown with farm area, farm fragmentation, fragment dispersal, and contact with neighbouring herds. Whilst our results show small but significant increases in breakdown risk associated with each factor, these relationships were strongly confounded with the number of contiguous neighbours with bovine tuberculosis. Our key finding was that every infected neighbour led to an increase in the odds of breakdown by 40% to 50%, and that highly fragmented farms were almost twice as likely to have a bTB positive neighbour compared to nonfragmented farms. Our results suggest that after controlling for herd size, herd type, spatial and temporal factors, farm fragmentation increasingly exposes herds to infection originating from first-order spatial neighbours. Given Northern Ireland’s particularly fragmented landscape, and reliance on short-term leases, our data support the hypothesis that between-herd contiguous spread is a particularly important component of the region’s bovine tuberculosis disease system.
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spelling pubmed-89542552022-03-26 Investigating Farm Fragmentation as a Risk Factor for Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle Herds: A Matched Case-Control Study from Northern Ireland Milne, Georgina Graham, Jordon McGrath, John Kirke, Raymond McMaster, Wilma Byrne, Andrew William Pathogens Article Bovine tuberculosis remains a challenging endemic pathogen of cattle in many parts of the globe. Spatial clustering of Mycoacterium bovis molecular types in cattle suggests that local factors are the primary drivers of spread. Northern Ireland’s agricultural landscape is comprised of highly fragmented farms, distributed across spatially discontinuous land parcels, and these highly fragmented farms are thought to facilitate localised spread. We conducted a matched case control study to quantify the risks of bovine tuberculosis breakdown with farm area, farm fragmentation, fragment dispersal, and contact with neighbouring herds. Whilst our results show small but significant increases in breakdown risk associated with each factor, these relationships were strongly confounded with the number of contiguous neighbours with bovine tuberculosis. Our key finding was that every infected neighbour led to an increase in the odds of breakdown by 40% to 50%, and that highly fragmented farms were almost twice as likely to have a bTB positive neighbour compared to nonfragmented farms. Our results suggest that after controlling for herd size, herd type, spatial and temporal factors, farm fragmentation increasingly exposes herds to infection originating from first-order spatial neighbours. Given Northern Ireland’s particularly fragmented landscape, and reliance on short-term leases, our data support the hypothesis that between-herd contiguous spread is a particularly important component of the region’s bovine tuberculosis disease system. MDPI 2022-02-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8954255/ /pubmed/35335623 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pathogens11030299 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Milne, Georgina
Graham, Jordon
McGrath, John
Kirke, Raymond
McMaster, Wilma
Byrne, Andrew William
Investigating Farm Fragmentation as a Risk Factor for Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle Herds: A Matched Case-Control Study from Northern Ireland
title Investigating Farm Fragmentation as a Risk Factor for Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle Herds: A Matched Case-Control Study from Northern Ireland
title_full Investigating Farm Fragmentation as a Risk Factor for Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle Herds: A Matched Case-Control Study from Northern Ireland
title_fullStr Investigating Farm Fragmentation as a Risk Factor for Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle Herds: A Matched Case-Control Study from Northern Ireland
title_full_unstemmed Investigating Farm Fragmentation as a Risk Factor for Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle Herds: A Matched Case-Control Study from Northern Ireland
title_short Investigating Farm Fragmentation as a Risk Factor for Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle Herds: A Matched Case-Control Study from Northern Ireland
title_sort investigating farm fragmentation as a risk factor for bovine tuberculosis in cattle herds: a matched case-control study from northern ireland
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8954255/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35335623
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pathogens11030299
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