Application of Metabolomics in Diagnosis of Cow Mastitis: A Review

Abstract

Cow mastitis, with high incidence rate and complex cause of disease, is one of the main diseases that affect the development of dairy industry in the world. Clinical mastitis and subclinical mastitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Streptococcus, and other pathogens have a huge potential safety hazard to food safety and the rapid development of animal husbandry. The economic loss caused by cow mastitis is billions of dollars every year in the world. In recent years, the omics technology has been widely used in animal husbandry with the continuous breakthrough of sequencing technology and the continuous reduction of sequencing cost. For dairy cow mastitis, the traditional diagnostic technique, such as histopathological screening, somatic cell count, milk pH test, milk conductivity test, enzyme activity test, and infrared thermography, are difficult to fully and comprehensively clarify its pathogenesis due to their own limitations. Metabolomics technology is an important part of system biology, which can simultaneously analyze all low molecular weight metabolites such as amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates under the action of complex factors including internal and external environment and in a specific physiological period accurately and efficiently, and then clarify the related metabolic pathways. Metabolomics, as the most downstream of gene expression, can amplify the small changes of gene and protein expression at the level of metabolites, which can more fully reflect the cell function. The application of metabolomics technology in cow mastitis can analyze the hetero metabolites, identify the related biomarkers, and reveal the physiological and pathological changes of cow mammary gland, so as to provide valuable reference for the prediction, diagnosis, and treatment of mastitis. The research progress of metabolomics technology in cow mastitis in recent years was reviewed, in order to provide guidance for the development of cow health and dairy industry safety in this manuscript.

Metabolomic changes in lactating multiparous naturally MAP-infected Holstein-Friesian dairy cows suggest changes in mitochondrial energy pathways

“…Crucially, these metabolites were significantly elevated in MAPinfected cattle aged between 1-month and 19-months of age, compared to control cattle (Taylor et al, 2021). This stated some of our MAP associated metabolites have been also seen in a metabolomic assessment of mastitis infection (Hu et al, 2021). Indeed, out of 45 identified metabolites in this MAP study, 5 have been previously linked to mastitis.…”

Escherichia coli Mastitis in Dairy Cattle: Etiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment Challenges

“…Importantly, genome studies on mastitis-associated E. coli have been questioned by some investigators, who argue the need to simultaneously analyze the host-pathogen interaction ( Zadoks et al, 2011 ; Leimbach et al, 2017 ). For example, it is important to associate physiological traits with genomic data, including techniques such as dual RNA-Seq of the host and bacteria ( Westermann et al, 2016 , 2017 ), Tn-Seq to test virulence association of genes in vivo ( Opijnen et al, 2009 ; Peek et al, 2020 ), comparative SNP analysis of orthologous genes and intergenic regions ( Rocha et al, 2019 ), proteomics ( Zhang H. et al, 2018 ; Bathla et al, 2020 ), and metabolomics ( Tong et al, 2019 ; Hu et al, 2021 ).…”

Blood neutrophil extracellular traps: a novel target for the assessment of mammary health in transition dairy cows

“…The prognostication of mastitis is an integral component of transition dairy cow management, and mastitis biomarkers are required for effective diagnosis and prognosis [ 42 ]. Our previous work showed that the ratio of neutrophils to platelets could be prognostic for mastitis [ 43 ], but the underlying mechanism was not clear.…”