World Zoonoses Day!

This was the smallest calf I have ever seen! He was only about 35 pounds, and was 4 days old! Normal calves in the U.S. are usually around 85-100 pounds...he kinda looked like a goat actually lol

Today we went to a village to teach village children about zoonotic diseases in efforts with the World Zoonoses Day Project.  As some of you may know, and some may not, a zoonotic disease is a disease that can be spread from animal to human and vice a versa.  Such diseases include rabies and tuberculosis, just to name two.  We arrived at the village with a lot of students from TANUVAS, and the goal was to vaccinate cattle for rabies, deworm them, and educate the farmers about what certain zoonotic diseases are.  Also, we met with a class of 5^th and 7^th grade students at a local village school.  We asked about what they were learning and gave a quiz about our pamphlets we handed out.  The kids were awesome, and loved seeing us.  After that it was home to pack and then we headed to the bus station to travel 11 hours to the tip of India for sight seeing!

Also, our research on the Bovine TB and Brucellosis project has come to a meaningful end, as I have all of the information for my project concerning the “Incidence of Brucella in clinical samples collected at Madras Veterinary College, Chennai, India”.  Out of 23 samples collected, we tested them all, and found 2 were positive for a strain of Brucella deemed Brucella abortus.  These are interesting findings as both cases were exhibiting clinical signs of Brucellosis at the time of sample collection! 

For our Tuberculosis research, we had very interesting findings! The organism that is responsible for TB is under the genus called Mycobacterium.  There are 3 subspecies of Mycobacterium deemed M. bovis and M. tuberculosis.  Historically, it was thought that M. bovis was restricted to appearances in cattle, and M. tuberculosis was restricted to humans.  In America, we have known for quite some time that M. tuberculosis can exist in cows, and M. bovis can exist in humans.  However, in India, they are still under the assumption that M. bovis is only existent in cattle and M. tuberculosis only exists in humans. 

We conducted 2 different types of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests to determine if TB was present.  The first is an IS6110 PCR to detect if the Mycobacterium genus is present in the DNA.  The second is called a multiplex PCR in which we determine if M. bovis, M. tuberculosis, or another strain of Mycobacterium is present.  In our 23 clinical samples we found 4 cattle that were Mycobacterium genus positive.  Out of those 4, 2 were M. tuberculosis positive, and 2 were an unrecognizable banding pattern.  Therefore, we have proven to a certain extent that M. tuberculosis can be present in cattle AND in humans!  Interesting stuff! 

Now that we are wrapping up our studies, Dr. MohanKumar is going to try to get them published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA), but we are not getting our hopes up too high as it is very difficult to get published!  Also, this whole project including presenting research at an International Conference would be a huge resume booster if I ever wanted to apply for a PhD…not that I would want to do that after my DVM! But still fun to think about!