Clínica e cirurgia de espécies pecuárias

O presente relatório refere-se às atividades desenvolvidas durante o estágio final do Mestrado Integrado em Medicina Veterinária da Universidade de Évora. O trabalho está dividido em duas componentes. A primeira consiste na descrição das atividades desenvolvidas na área da sanidade, profilaxia e clínica médica e cirúrgica de espécies pecuárias. A área da sanidade animal foi, em termos percentuais, aquela que registou uma maior atividade. A segunda componente visa uma revisão bibliográfica da língua azul ou febre catarral ovina, complementada pelo relato e discussão de dois surtos, um numa vacada e outro num rebanho de ovinos. A língua azul é uma doença epizoótica, infeciosa, de etiologia viral, transmitida por insetos do género Culicoides que afeta ruminantes domésticos e silvestres; Abstract: This report refers to the activities developed during the final stage of the Master‘s Degree in Veterinary Medicine of the University of Évora. The work is divided into two components. The first is the description of the activities in the area of sanity, prophylaxis and medicine and surgery in livestock species. The area of sanity was, percentually, the one with most accounted cases. The second component of this work aims to a literature review of bluetongue, complemented with the presentation and discussion of two outbreaks, one in a cattle herd and the other in a sheep herd. Bluetongue is a viral, epizootic and infectious disease transmitted by insects of the genus Culicoides which affects domestic and wild ruminants.

Challenges in the rabbit haemorrhagic disease 2 (RHDV2) molecular diagnosis of vaccinated rabbits

Molecular methods are fundamental tools for the diagnosis of viral infections. While interpretation of results is straightforward for unvaccinated animals, where positivity represents ongoing or past infections, the presence of vaccine virus in the tissues of recently vaccinated animals may mislead diagnosis. In this study, we investigated the interference of RHDV2 vaccination in the results of a RT-qPCR for RHDV2 detection, and possible associations between mean Cq values of five animal groups differing in age, vaccination status and origin (domestic/wild). Viral sequences from vaccinated rabbits that died of RHDV2 infection (n = 14) were compared with the sequences from the commercial vaccines used in those animals. Group Cq means were compared through Independent t-test and One-way ANOVA. We proved that RHDV2 vaccine-RNA is not detected by the RT-qPCR as early as 15 days post- vaccination, an important fact in assisting results interpretation for diagnosis. Cq values of vaccinated and non-vaccinated infected domestic adults showed a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05), demonstrating that vaccination-induced immunity reduces viral loads and delays disease progression. Contrarily, in vaccinated young rabbits higher viral loads were registered compared to non-vaccinated kittens. No significant variation (p = 0.3824) was observed between viral loads of non- vaccinated domestic and wild RHDV2-victimised rabbits. Although the reduced number of vaccinated young animals analysed hampered a robust statistical analysis, this occurrence suggests that passively acquired maternal antibodies may inhibit the active immune response to vaccination, delaying protection and favouring disease progression. Our finding emphasises the importance of adapting kitten RHDV2 vaccination schedules to circumvent this interference phenomenon.