Vaccination appears to have beneficial effects regarding infection and death caused by WNV.

SYNOPSISObjective. We identified the risk factors associated with the anthrax outbreak of 2005 in animals in North Dakota.Methods. Medical records of the 2005 anthrax outbreak were obtained from the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at North Dakota State University. Additional data were obtained from the North Dakota state veterinarian's office, and supplemental questionnaires were administered to producers. The data obtained included ecological and environmental factors, animal health factors, and management factors.Results. Anthrax occurred from July 1 to October 12, 2005. The cases were located in eastern North Dakota around the Red River Basin. Ransom, LaMoure, and Barnes counties reported most cases (71%). Species affected included cattle, bison, horses, sheep, elk, deer, pigs, and llamas. The predominant symptom was sudden death (38%) followed by bleeding from orifices (17%). Chi-square analysis indicated significant differences between case and control premises on the following variables: death reported on neighboring pasture, vaccination period, dry conditions, wet conditions, antibiotic use, multiple vaccination, and type of predator (coyote). Factors that significantly (p,0.05) predicted anthrax occurrences on the final logistic regression model were vaccination, use of antibiotics during an outbreak, and period of vaccine administration (before or during the outbreak).Conclusions. The characteristics of the anthrax outbreak regarding time and place of occurrence, animals affected, clinical signs reported, and mortality rate were consistent with previous reports of natural anthrax outbreaks in animals. A number of factors that significantly predicted anthrax occurrence in animals in the 2005 outbreak in North Dakota were identified. This information is important in planning appropriate control and prevention measures for anthrax, including recommending the right vaccination and treatment regimens in managing future anthrax outbreaks.

Outbreaks of anthrax have diverse consequences on society. Establishing the appropriate control strategies is very important and crucial in reducing the socio-economic impact of the disease. Control measures are aimed at breaking the cycle of infection, and their implementation must be adhered to rigorously. The objectives of this paper were: (i) to review the control strategies currently used in management of anthrax in animals and (ii) to describe management strategies used by producers in North Dakota during the 2005 anthrax outbreak in livestock. Anthrax control strategies were divided in to strategies that apply before, during, and after an anthrax outbreak. This paper also highlights the problems or constraints faced by North Dakota producers in controlling anthrax during the outbreak of 2005.

Abstract. The objective of this study was to develop a reliable TaqmanH 59 Nuclease Assay for genotyping sheep for scrapie susceptibility. The sheep prion gene contains 2 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that may mediate resistance to classical scrapie, one at codon 136, alanine (A) or valine (V), and another at codon 171, arginine (R) or glutamine (Q). The R allele appears to confer resistance to classical scrapie, with the AA 136 RR 171 genotype the most resistant to scrapie and QR 171 only rarely infected in the US sheep population. The Assays by Design SM protocol was used for development of probes and primers for codon 136 and Primer ExpressH for codon 171. Commercially available kits were used to isolate genomic DNA from blood or muscle. For validation, 70 SNP determinations for each codon were compared to commercial testing with an error rate of less than 1%. Then, 935 samples from blood (n 5 818) and muscle (n 5 117) were tested for both codons with 928 successful determinations and only 7 samples (,1% of total samples) that needed repeating. Genotypes were AA QQ (n 5 102; 11.0%), AV QQ (n 5 28; 3.0%), AA QR (n 5 396; 42.7%), AV QR (n 5 54; 5.8%), and AA RR (n 5 348; 37.5%). Thus, 86% of the sheep tested (n 5 798) contained R at codon 171 and were expected to be scrapie-resistant. This new TaqmanH 59 Nuclease SNP genotyping assay is accurate, easy to perform, and useful in the study of classical scrapie in sheep and its prevention through selective breeding programs to eliminate highly susceptible animals.Key words: Genotype; PCR; prion; scrapie; sheep.Scrapie is a fatal and incurable neurological disease of sheep that belongs to a family of prion diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE). Other well-known members of the family include bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD, the disease associated with BSE transmission to humans), and chronic wasting disease of cervids. Although scrapie does not appear to be transmitted to humans, concerns for the effects of TSEs on human welfare and for the loss of millions of dollars to sheep producers from this debilitating disease have prompted the National Institute for Animal Agriculture to promote a program for worldwide scrapie eradication by 2010. 17Genotyping sheep for genes that appear to confer resistance to contracting classical scrapie has been used for several years in an attempt to eradicate scrapie through selective breeding. Eight commercial laboratories are approved by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to perform the official scrapie genotyping. Approved laboratories are eligible to conduct privately funded official scrapie genotype testing and compete for National Scrapie Eradication Program funded official genotyping. Their tests are reliable (most claim 99% reliability) and accurate, but relatively expensive.Currently, there are numerous methods for detecting single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in genes.12 Many of these use r...

In North Dakota (USA) during April 1998, a ranched female bison (Bison bison) was found dead. At gross necropsy, there was profound hair loss and consolidated lung lobes. Intracytoplasmic neuronal inclusions suggestive of Negri bodies were observed in the brain stem and hippocampus, and a diagnosis of rabies was confirmed by the fluorescent antibody test. Antigenic typing demonstrated the occurrence of a rabies virus variant associated with skunks from the upper midwestern USA. This case of a rabid bison was one of only four such instances recorded from the USA over the past 40 yr, and is the first case report of rabies in a bison that reports clinical, pathologic, and antigenic findings. Although rabies in bison is rare, veterinarians and wildlife managers that work closely with such non-traditional species are reminded of the dangers that zoonoses such as rabies present.