Seroprevalence and “Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices” (KAPs) survey of endemic ovine brucellosis in Egypt

Abstract

BackgroundBetween February and July 2014, a cross-sectional study to estimate the seroprevalence of brucellosis in sheep in the Kafrelsheikh district of Egypt was carried out, together with a survey of knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAPs) among local shepherds. A total of 273 serum samples were collected from 28 sheep flocks in 10 villages within the study area. These samples were analysed by the Rose Bengal Plate test (RBPT) test, with all positive samples being confirmed by complement fixation test (CFT).ResultsTrue seroprevalence was 20 % (95 % CI 15.3–24.7 %) with the prevalence of villages with at least one seropositive sheep estimated at 95.5 % (95 % CI 92.2–100 %); village flock seroprevalence ranged from 0 to 46.8 %. Results of the KAPs survey demonstrated that despite good knowledge regarding brucellosis being potentially present within their flocks, shepherds lacked knowledge regarding routes of livestock to humans disease transmission and the symptoms of brucellosis in humans. This lack of knowledge regarding disease transmission resulted in high-risk practices being widespread—practices such as assisting parturition without protective measures, throwing aborted material into water canals and a reluctance to remove animals that had aborted from the flock.ConclusionsThis study proposes potential measures to reduce seroprevalence of brucellosis in sheep and reduce public health risks from brucellosis such as culling aborted livestock and educational campaigns among shepherds regarding disease risks and modes of transmission.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13028-015-0183-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Brucellosis knowledge and preventive practices among herders in Western Mongolia

“…In our study, herders with a higher level of knowledge were more likely to correctly dispose of aborted fetuses and birth materials compared to those with a lower level of knowledge. In Egypt, lack of knowledge regarding disease transmission was associated with throwing aborted materials into water canals (Hegazy et al, ), consistent with findings from this research. Also, there was a difference between the two provinces.…”

“…In our results, around half of herders reported that they bury aborted fetuses and birth materials. This practice was highly prevalent (94%) among Tajikistan's dairy farmers (Lindahl et al, ), but not in Pakistan (Arif et al, ), Egypt (Hegazy et al, ) or Jordan (Musallam et al, ). In our study, herders with a higher level of knowledge were more likely to correctly dispose of aborted fetuses and birth materials compared to those with a lower level of knowledge.…”

“…Preventive measures mainly focus on minimizing such contact through behavioural changes, such as livestock vaccination, pasteurization of milk and elimination of infected animals (Roth et al, ). Only a handful of studies, conducted in Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt, showed that knowledge of brucellosis was related to preventive behaviours (Arif et al, ; Hegazy, Elmonir, Abdel‐Hamid, & Elbauomy, ; Musallam, Abo‐Shehada, & Guitian, ). The objective of this study was to assess the level of knowledge and practices related to brucellosis prevention among herders in Western Mongolia, and to assess associations between knowledge and preventive behaviours.…”

Novel equine tissue miRNAs and breed-related miRNA expressed in serum

“…In these libraries, the size distribution followed the RNA length distribution reported in other equine and bovine serum samples [19, 20], with the majority of the reads (78 %) falling into piwi-interacting RNA region (30–32 nt) and with a smaller peak (4 %) in the mature miRNA region (22–23 nt). On the other hand, after removal of low-quality reads, the flanking linker and primer sequences, SOLiD data comprised 8 M reads on average with mean per sequence quality of 27 in the Phred scale per library.…”

“…The absorbance in 200 μl of serum was measured at 414 nm wavelength, which is the length of maximum absorbance for haemoglobin [55, 56]. The RNA was extracted from 2 ml of serum using miRNeasy serum/plasma kit as described in [20]. The concentration of RNA extracted was measured with Qubit RNA High Sensitivity kit and ranged from 2 to 428 ng/μl (20 ng/μl on average).…”