The risk of lumpy skin disease is increasing day by day. Due to this, the livestock breeders of the country are worried. Lumpy skin is an increasing scourge in many states of the country. Lumpy skin disease has been reported in 175 districts of 15 states of the country. More than 15 lakh cows are infected with this disease. It has been reported that 75 thousand cows have died so far. Various states are taking measures to check the increasing incidence of lumpy disease. Currently, Lumpy’s infection seems to be spreading from one state to another.
According to the data obtained, lumpy disease has spread in 33 districts of Rajasthan. This infection has wreaked havoc in 26 out of 33 districts of Gujarat. While 23 districts of Punjab and all 22 districts of Haryana and 21 districts of Uttar Pradesh have come under its grip. Due to Lumpy disease, there is a big crisis in front of the farmers who earn their living from cow rearing. They are facing a big financial hit. On the other hand, milk is also becoming scarce.
The governments of the affected states are waiting for the rains to stop. Because it is being said that the reason for the spread of this infection is only due to rain. It is said that with the end of the rains, the mosquitoes will decrease and the Lumpy’s havoc will also decrease. At the same time, the work of vaccination is going on rapidly. Cows are being vaccinated to protect them from this disease.
As soon as Lumpy is infected, the ability of cows to give milk decreases. In some places, the supply of milk is completely stopped. Milk production has declined by 30 percent in the five most lumpy-affected districts of Rajasthan. At the same time, milk production in Gujarat has been affected by 10 percent. In Punjab, milk production has decreased by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the milk unions have hiked the price of milk by Rs 2 to Rs 4 due to reduced supply.
Lumpy skin disease has been introduced in the state from Gujarat and Rajasthan. Although the death rate in this disease is very low, vaccination is preferred. At present 17 districts of the state are infected. Animal markets have been closed as part of preventive measures to contain the infection.
What is Lumpy skin disease?
Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is an infectious disease in cattle caused by a virus of the family Poxviridae, also known as Neethling virus. It is genetically related to the goatpox and sheeppox virus family. Lumpy skin diseases kills over 3,000 cattle, infects 50,000 in Rajasthan The disease is characterized by fever, enlarged superficial lymph nodes and multiple nodules (measuring 2-5 centimetres (1-2 in) in diameter) on the skin and mucous membranes (including those of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts). Infected cattle also may develop edematous swelling in their limbs and exhibit lameness. Lumpy skin disease can lead to significant economic losses since affected animals tend to have permanent damage to their skin, lowering the commercial value of their hide. Additionally, the disease often results in chronic debility, reduced milk production, poor growth, infertility, abortion, and sometimes death. The disease has been reporeted in several Indian states like Assam, Odisha, Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, etc.
Signs and Symptoms
Onset of fever occurs almost one week after infection by the virus. This initial fever may exceed 41 °C (106 °F) and persist for one week. At this time, all of the superficial lymph nodes become enlarged. The nodules, in which the disease is characterized by, appear seven to nineteen days after virus inoculation. Coinciding with the appearance of the nodules, discharge from the eyes and nose becomes mucopurulent.
Susceptbile hosts
Lumpy skin disease is host-specific, causing natural infection in cattle and Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis). Lumpy skin disease does not affect humans.
How the disease spreads
The transmission of LSD is not completely understood. The main two routes of transmission are mechanical transmission by arthropod vectors such as mosquitoes, ticks and biting flies and the movement of infected animals. The disease can also be spread by fomites through such things as contaminated equipment and in some cases directly from animal to animal. The disease has shown its ability to establish and spread in a wide range of environmental and productions systems around the world. The Lumpy Skin Disease spreads through bloodsucking insects, certain species of flies and through contaminated food and water.
Can humans get infected with Lumpy Skin
Disease LSDV is highly host-specific and causes disease only in cattle (Bos indicus and B. taurus) and water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis). It does not cause disease in humans. Also, there is no risk from consuming beef or dairy products. A study in Ethiopia showed evidence of differential breed susceptibility to LSD, with Holstein Friesian or crossbred cattle exhibiting higher morbidity and mortality due to LSD when compared with local zebu cattle. LSDV is not zoonotic, so humans cannot get affected by the disease.
What Causes Lumpy Skin Disease?
Lumpy skin disease is a viral disease caused by the LSD virus (LSDV), a Capripoxvirus which is genetically related to the goatpox and sheeppox virus family. Although the disease is not transmissible from one species to another, it has been found that the disease can be transmitted from fomites (inanimate objects carrying microbes).
How does LSD Spread?
LSD spreads through biting flies, mosquitos, and ticks. Direct contact with an infected animal also leads to the spread of infection. LSD is host specific infection of cattle and buffalo only and does not spread to other animals.
Symptoms of Lumpy Skin Disease in Cattle
Clinical findings of lumpy skin disease in cattle include:
- High grade fever
- Discharge of fluid from nose mouth and eyes
- characteristic eruptions on the skin and other parts of the body in ~50% of susceptible cattle. The incubation period during which the virus prepares itself for the disease is 4–14 days.
- Nodules on the body. These nodules are round, slightly raised, firm, and painful involving the entire skin and the mucosa of the gastrointestinal tract, respiratory, and genital tracts.
- Nodules may develop on the muzzle and within the nasal and buccal mucous membranes. The skin nodules contain a firm, creamy-gray or yellow mass of tissue.
- Regional lymph nodes are swollen, and edema develops in the udder, brisket, and legs.
The disease may progress to a more serious condition leading to severe itching in the udder and teats and these areas may become infected and swollen. Udder infections may end up in mastitis (udder infection) which will require medical treatment.
How to Detect LSD virus in Cattle and Buffalo?
- Tissue biopsy: The best way to detect LSD is to take a tissue sample from the skin and send it to a laboratory for virus isolation. In order to collect a sample for detection of the virus, the animal is locally anaesthetized and a small piece of skin is removed with a scalpel, which is placed in a sterile container to be sent to the laboratory for isolation of the virus.
- Nasal swabs and blood samples can also be used for the detection of LSD.
Treatment of Lumpy Skin Disease
- Treatment is mainly focused on preventing the progression of the disease by keeping the skin clean and dry and treating the skin lesions and udder infections.
- In order to prevent the progression of the disease and the development of scabby udders and teats, the skin should be kept clean and dry and the animal should be regularly scraped with a blunt knife and the skin treated with an antibacterial ointment to prevent any scab formation.
- If the udders and teats are infected, they should be regularly treated with a topical cream.
- In addition, the animal should be allowed to rest and fed a high-quality forage and vitamins.
- Antibiotics, as well as NSAIDs, can help to control the spread of secondary infections.
- Good nursing care can help to overcome the effects of the disease.
How to prevent the spread of LSD?
- Control the movement of cattle
- LSD Vaccination which is available in the market
- Control of mosquitos, flies and ticks as they are responsible for spread of LSD virus
- Enhanced farm biosecurity measures. Don’t let infected animals mix with other animals.
- Enhanced hygiene of the farm by keeping the farm clean
Vaccination
Lumpy Skin Disease vaccine: Lumpi-ProVacInd, which could be commercially launched in a few months, is a homologous, live attenuated vaccine specifically targeted to protect cattle against the LSD virus.
The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is aiming to commercially launch in “four-five months” its indigenously-developed vaccine against the Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) virus that has killed around 50,000 heads of cattle in several states since April.
Bhupendra Nath Tripathi, Deputy Director-General (Animal Sciences) of ICAR, said that Agrinnovate India, the commercialisation arm for products and technologies developed by ICAR institutes, had issued an expression of interest document for the vaccine, ‘Lumpi-ProVacInd’, last month, and that three companies had shown interest.
NB- Ajooni Biotech Ltd has successfully developed lumpy skin disease medicine for Cattle.
According to the regulatory filing, the company is constantly experimenting and working on research-based different health care solutions by a strong Research & Development team, working closely with leading research agencies, universities and independent scientists for product and process development.
“Its focus is to develop cost effective solutions to improve animal health, sustainable productivity of dairy and poultry farm, and thereby, the profitability of farmers”, the company said on Thursday.
Further, the recent fast-spreading outbreak of lumpy skin disease (LSD) in cattle is estimated to have infected large number of animals particularly cows across India and over thousands of head of cattle have succumbed to the disease.
The Company has been working for the last few months to develop new medicines to control Lumpy Skin disease as a part of its regular research work and has been successful to produce a most effective formula at very reasonable cost by our expert team of Doctors and Scientists.
The animal starts improving with first few doses and fully recovered with in a week’s time. Ajooni has run very successful trails in Dairy Farms and results are very encouraging and really marvelous. The unique product is antipyretic, anti-inflammatory and antiallergic also. It overcomes the ill effects of Lumpy skin disease in addition to fever, lacrimation, hyper salivation and characteristic skin eruption.
In addition to this, Ajooni has an agreement with IFFCO KISAN, an organization committed to enriching farmer life and a sustainable ecosystem had started showing results with their combined efforts of marketing and supply of BIS Mark Cattle Feed for the state of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Western UP.
The Company has a long-term business plan to expand its facilities to produce Camel feed, Poultry feed, Aqua feed, Horse feed, and Sheep/Goat feed. The Company has set up under the project titled “Dairy Value Chain Development in Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh” financially supported by National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) & Uttar Pradesh State Rural Livelihood Mission (UP-SRLM) with NDDB Dairy Services (NDS) as technical Support Agency.
What is Lumpi-ProVacInd, and how does it work?
The vaccine, which has been jointly developed by ICAR’s National Research Centre on Equines (NRCE) at Hisar, Haryana and the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) at Izatnagar, UP, is a live attenuated vaccine, similar to those used against tuberculosis, measles, mumps and rubella.
“It is also homologous, providing 100 per cent protection against LSD in cattle. Currently, we are only administering goat pox and sheep pox virus vaccines. These are heterologous vaccines offering only cross-protection (up to 60-70 per cent) for cattle against LSD, by virtue of all the three viruses belonging to the same capripoxvirus genus,” Tripathi explained to The Indian Express.
Inactivated virus vaccines, such as Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin that is being used to inoculate people against Covid-19, are less effective, with just 5-6 months efficacy against capripox viruses. Hence, the choice of a live attenuated vaccine for LSD.
How was the Lumpy Skin Disease vaccine developed?
Naveen Kumar, veterinary virologist and principal scientist at NRCE, said that the institute had collected skin nodule samples from LSD-infected cows near Ranchi in December 2019. The virus was isolated at the Hisar-based institute by early-January 2020. This was a period when cases of the disease were coming in from Odisha and eastern states. “These weren’t leading to any mortality. But being a virus totally new to India, we decided to work on it,” he said.
The next step was to propagate the isolated virus in African green monkey kidney (Vero) cells used in cultures. The culturing was done over 50 generations (“passages”) and took about 17 months. As the virus mutated after repeated passages, its virulence or disease-causing ability weakened. The pathogenicity loss started from around the 30th passage, although the mutated virus could induce the necessary immune response from its host.
“We did sequencing of the virus genome at the start and the 10th, 30th and 50th passages. The attenuated live virus was identified as a vaccine candidate after the 50th passage and tested on our laboratory mice and rabbits,” Kumar said.
In April this year, experimental trials of the vaccine candidate on the natural host (cattle) was undertaken at IVRI. These included 10 male calves that were administered the vaccine and five “control” animals that weren’t. After a month, both sets of calves were injected with the virulent virus. The control calves showed most of the LSD symptoms, whereas the vaccinated animals had developed full immunity.
Since July, field trials have also taken place, starting with 140-odd cattle (lactating and pregnant cows as well as calves, heifers and bulls) at a gaushala at Banswara in Rajasthan. The vaccine has also been administered to animals in 35 other gaushalas and dairy farms in Udaipur, Alwar and Jodhpur, besides Hisar and Hansi (Haryana) and Mathura (UP).
“We have not seen the disease in any of these animals, even while it has spread everywhere around them,” said Kumar.
So what exactly is the Lumpy Skin Disease virus and how prevalent is it?
LSD is caused by the lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV), which is a virus of the capripoxvirus genus in the poxviridae family. Sheeppox virus and goatpox virus are the other members of the genus capripoxvirus. The LSDV mainly infects cattle: cow and its progeny, and the Asian water buffalo.
According to a 2021 report of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), LSD outbreaks occur as epidemics several years apart. There is no known specific reservoir of the virus, and it is also not known where and how the virus survives between epidemics, the FAO report said.
The FAO report said that after being restricted for long to sub-Saharan Africa, the virus has spread to the Middle East and Turkey over the past decade. From 2015 onward, it has infected cattle in southeastern and Eastern Europe and in Russia.
LSD entered India, Bangladesh and China in July 2019. Since then, outbreaks of the disease have been reported from 20 Indian states and UTs, including Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.
How does LSD spread, and what are the symptoms of the disease?
LSDV spreads through blood-sucking vectors like ticks, mites, and mosquitoes, and also through contaminated water, fodder, and feed. Mosquito and housefly infestations reach their peak during the monsoon, and veterinary scientists and government officers blamed the very wet July for the rapid spread of the infection this year especially in Gujarat, where the outbreak started.
Scientists have been advising that infected animals be isolated; however, the large numbers of stray cattle makes this task difficult, and has possibly been contributing to the rapid spread of the disease.
LSDV attacks the circulatory system of an animal and causes vasculitis or inflammation of blood vessels and lesions in organs like liver, lungs, spleen, lymph nodes etc, Prof R M Patel, head of the department of medicine at the College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry (CVSAS), Dantiwada, said.
The epidermis, the outer surface of the skin, gets separated from the dermis or inner layer, leading to the formation of lumps or nodules on an animal’s body. Fever, increased mucus secretion, and loss of appetite are among the other symptoms.
Autopsies carried out by Prof Patel’s team on eight carcasses in Kutch and Banaskantha found that the virus had caused necrotising vasculitis, or the death of tissues, and fibrosis in various organs of the infected cattle, leading to their death.
Also, the nodules may burst due to outer pressure or friction as the skin covering such nodules is very thin. The open wounds make the animals susceptible to secondary bacterial and protozoal infections, and maggot infestations can prove fatal.
And how bad is the current outbreak of Lumpy Skin Disease in India?
There were small outbreaks in Gujarat’s Kheda and Anand in 2020 and 2021, which the state animal husbandry department controlled by treating the infected cattle and giving goat pox vaccine to healthy animals in peripheral areas. But this year has been very different.
Since the first case was reported from Kaiyari, a village on the Indo-Pak border in Lakhpat taluka of Kutch, LSD has swept through the state, infecting cows of all breeds, and spread to at least 11 other states and Union Territories. Buffaloes have been largely safe.
According to official data, LSD has infected about 11.21 lakh cattle and caused 49,628 deaths across India as on August 31. The virus has been reported in Rajasthan (31 districts), Gujarat (26), Punjab (24), Haryana (22), Uttar Pradesh (21), Jammu & Kashmir (18), Himachal Pradesh (9), Madhya Pradesh (5), Uttarakhand (4), Maharashtra (3), Goa (1), and Andaman & Nicobar Islands (1).
Government officials said the actual numbers of both infections and deaths could be much higher — many dairy farmers and cattle herders may not be reporting cases, or they could be consulting private veterinarians.
Eradication of LSD is difficult and early detection is essential for successful control and eradication.
Measures to taken on farm in case of suspicion
If possible, separate the suspected case(s) from the rest of the herd. If possible, separate the rest of the animals from neighbouring herd(s) by feeding them on the farm and avoiding communal grazing Disinfect your hands, footwear, and outfit using any common disinfectant and when at home/farm wash the clothes at +60 °C. Disinfect equipment and materials used in the affected holding. Contact your veterinarian for support.
Prevention
A careful surveillance of the disease onset and spread is to be taken up at the farm level. Purchase of new animals that are either incubating the disease or are viraemic without exhibiting any symptoms presents a major risk of introducing the disease into a naïve herd. Introduction of new animals into herds should therefore be limited. Stock should be bought only from trusted sources. New animals should be examined and declared free of clinical signs prior to movement and on arrival, and should be kept separated/quarantined from the herd for at least 28 days In affected villages, cattle herds should be kept separate from other herds by avoiding communal grazing. Cattle should be treated regularly with insect repellents to minimize the risk of vector transmission of the disease. This measure cannot fully prevent transmission but may reduce the risk. Ads by Limiting vector breeding sites such as standing water sources, slurry and manure, and improving drainage in holdings are sustainable, affordable and environmentally friendly ways of reducing the number of vectors on and around cattle. How long does lumpy skin disease take to heal? Complete recovery may take several months and may be prolonged when secondary bacterial infections occur. Treatment is directed at preventing or controlling secondary infection. It may take up to 6 months for animals severely affected by LSD virus to recover fully.
Transmission of LSD to Humans
- Lumpy skin disease is a viral disease in cattle. No reports of transmission to humans have been made so far.
Precautionary measures for the general public
- When preparing and cleaning meat, we should follow all general safety precautions.
- Meat that has been thoroughly cooked and properly washed is safe for consumption.
- Only consume boiled or pasteurized milk
- Always wash your hands after handling the meat and milk.
LATEST UPDATES ON LUMPY SKIN DISEASE FROM SOCIAL MEDIA:
Maha govt declares state as ‘controlled area’ to prevent spread of Lumpy Skin Disease in cattle
The Maharashtra government has declared the whole state as a “controlled area” to curb the spread of Lumpy Skin Disease in cattle, an official said here on Friday.
The viral disease has so far claimed the lives of 29 animals in the state, he added.
The disease was first reported in the state at Chinawal village in Raver tehsil of Jalgaon district on August 4.
Cases have been since found in 185 villages across Jalgaon, Ahmednagar, Akola, Dhule, Pune, Satara, Latur, Aurangabad, Beed, Buldhana, Amravati, Osmanabad, Kolhapur, Sangli, Yeotmal, Parbhani, Solapur and Washim districts.
A notification issued by the Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Dairy Development and Fisheries Department said the Union government has advised states to curtail the entry of animals suspected to be suffering from the disease in order to curb its spread.
“However, bovine species of animals are still entering Maharashtra from adjoining states,” it said.
“Therefore, under the Prevention and Control of Infectious and Contagious Diseases in Animals Act, the state government declares the whole state of Maharashtra as a ‘Controlled Area’ to control, prevent and eradicate Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) and prohibit the movement of all the cattle and buffaloes,” the notification added.
The notification prohibits the holding of animal markets, animal races, animal fairs, animal exhibitions and any activity involving any sort of gathering and grouping of animals.
The disease is curable with medication, the animal husbandry department said.
https://www.pashudhanpraharee.com/lumpy-skin-disease-lsd-an-emerging-disease-in-india/
