Parasitic Gut Diseases I Flashcards
What is the typical lifecycle of gut nematodes in ruminants?
- Adults mate in the GIT
- Eggs are then passed out in the faeces
- Eggs then hatch out and develop into L3 larvae
- Larvae are ingested, and 2 moults occur
What are the important sheep abomasum parasites?
- Haemonchus contortus
- Teladorsagia circumcinta
- Trichostrongylus axel
What are the important small intestine sheep parasites?
- Nematodirus battus
- Trichostrongylus spp.
What is the important cattle abomasum parasite?
Ostertagia ostertagi
What is the important small intestine cattle parasite
cooperia oncophora
What are the key notes for osteratagia ostertagi?
- Has a worldwide distribution
- larvae develop in the gastric glands of the abomasum and mature on the mucousal surface
- The prepatent period is 3 weeks
- requires up to 2 grazing seasons to acquire immunity
What is the pathogenesis for type 1 bovine ostertagiosis?
- Occurs in calves in the first grazing season
- they ingest larvae and then it develops 3-4 weeks later
- Occurs from mid July
- there is profuse watery diarrhoea (green), weight loss, mortality is rare if it is treated early
What is the pathogenesis for Type II bovine ostertagiosis?
- Occurs in yearlings in the late winter/ spring following the first grazing season
- the larvae are ingested in the autumn and then arrest *hyperbiosis *
- larvae emerge together in late winter months
- has a high mortality rate
- diarrhoea, anorexia and thirst
- poor treatment response
What is hyperbiosis?
development arrests around the L3/L4 stage
metabolic rate decreases
What are the initiating factors of hypobiosis?
- Host immune responses
- seasonal influences
- overcrowding
What is the biological importance of hypobiosis?
- allows them to survive in hostile environmental conditions
- larvae may be less susceptible to some antithelmintics
What does ostergiosis do to the body?
There is a loss of the parietal cells in the abomasum
This increases the pH of the abomasal contents
This causes a failure to convert pepsinogen to pepsin
therefore protein digestion is impaired and there is a bacterial accumulation in the GIT
you also dont have the acid ph preventing bacterial growth
What is the epidemiology of ostertagiosis?
1) Overwintered L3 infect calves after turn-out → sub-clinical infection, eggs deposited
2) Overwintered L3 die during spring
3) Eggs develop to L3, become infective by mid-June, can → type I disease in July-Oct
4) As temps↓ larvae arrest at EL4. By late autumn calves can harbour 1000s of EL4
5) Maturation of EL4 larvae in winter & early spring → type II disease
What is the epidemiology of ostertagiosis in spring-calving herds?
- Immune adults graze alongside calves & ingest larvae
- Little ostertagiosis, egg production by adults is low
- Overwintered L3 die before suckling calves ingest much grass
- Low numbers of L3 available on pasture later in the year
What is the epidemiology of autumn/ winter calving?
- Ostertagiosis in following grazing season if grazed on contaminated pasture &
insufficient immunity as young calves
What does cooperia oncophora cause?
- inappetence/ poor weight gain in calves
Where do cooperia oncophora develop?
The adults develop on the surface of the intestinal mucosa
What are the four main gut nematode diseases in sheep?
- Nematodirosis
- Ostertagiosis
- Haemonchosis
- Trichostrongylosis
What are the key features of nematodirosis?
- Important in lambs
- Development to L3 takes place in eggshell
- Hatching requires prolonged chill, then mean temp >10oC (late spring)
- L3 larvae penetrate mucosa of small intestine, 2 moults then enter lumen
What is the pathogenesis of nematodiresis?
- Due to larvae
- It causes severe damage to the villi and erosion of the mucosa -> villous atrophy and fusion
- there is an impaired ability of the intestine to exchange fluids and nutrients