Efficacy of Ozone as a Novel Treatment Option for Urovagina in Dairy Cows

Abstract

Urovagina is detrimental to the health and fertility of cows worldwide. Surgery, the only known treatment, is not economically pragmatic to dairy practice, and it has some medical drawbacks. The objective of this study was to determine whether reproductive problems associated with urovagina could be alleviated through more practical and less-invasive treatment options to allow successful conception and term-pregnancy. Cows diagnosed with urovagina (n = 1219) were divided into three treatment groups, each containing an equal number of cows with mild, moderate and severe urovagina. The groups received one of three treatment options: saline (group A, n = 400), streptomycin (group B, n = 400) or ozone (group C, n = 419) flush, regardless of the severity of the urovagina condition within the group. The ozone treatment was found to be the most effective treatment modality, resulting in the shortest period of days open (95, 89 and 79 days in groups A, B and C, respectively; p < 0.05), the fewest number of inseminations until pregnancy (2.38, 1.84 and 1.63 in groups A, B and C, respectively; p < 0.05) and the smallest number of culled cows (20, 23 and 12 in groups A, B and C, respectively; p < 0.05). The ozone flush coupled with intracornual insemination presents an effective treatment option for urovagina that can lead to successful conceptions and pregnancies in dairy cows.

Efficacy of Ozone and Other Treatment Modalities for Retained Placenta in Dairy Cows

“…At the same time, the differences within the two ozone treatment groups (A and B) were not statistically significant. The ozone therapy has already been considered in intrauterine treatment of urovagina (Zobel et al. 2012), and according to our data, it should be considered as an effective treatment for retained placenta to reduce CE during puerperium.…”

“…2009). Ozone was found to be an effective treatment for colpitis in people (Guennadi et al 2008), as well as mastitis (Ogata and Nagahata 2000;Ohtsuka et al 2006) and urovagina in dairy cows (Zobel et al 2012).…”

Prophylaxis and therapeutic potential of ozone in buiatrics: Current knowledge

“…Moreover, there are a lot of facts in these reports which underline the advantages of ozone preparations over antibiotics applied for the same preventive and therapeutic purposes (Ogata and Nagahata, 2000;Ohtsuka et al, 2006;Djuricic et al, 2011aDjuricic et al, , 2012aZobel et al, 2012;Ioffe and Chernova, 2013;Ðuričić et al, 2014;Zobel et al, 2014a,b;Djuricic et al, 2015).…”

“…Although the use of ozone in veterinary medicine can be traced back more than 30 years (Altman, 2007), it is still insufficient and related only to certain specific areas, such as the treatment of mastitis, metritis, endometritis, fetal membrane retention, vaginitis, urovagina, enteritis and laminitis, as well as in the local treatment of various lesions and neuromuscular disorders, and in the intravenous application of ozone diluted in saline for flushing equine intestines (Marusi et al, 1999;Alves et al, 2004;Zobel et al, 2012;Ðuričić et al, 2014;Zobel et al, 2014a;Djuricic et al, 2015). Ozone also acts as a strong analgesic when applied post-operatively following ovariohysterectomy in bitches (Teixeira et al, 2013).…”

“…These lesions can be treated with ozone spray supplied with a catheter, which has to be pushed into the vagina in order to apply the preparation for 3-5 s. Such treatment produces a foam which fills the vagina and vestibule of the vagina and stimulates cicatrization and the regeneration of injuries through the proliferation of granular tissue. Intravaginal treatment with ozone spray may also shorten the days open until pregnancy and improve reproductive efficiency in cows due to the fact that urovagina and pneumovagina can be a reason for prolonged days open until pregnancy, repeat breed syndrome and infertility (Zobel et al, 2012).…”