New Therapeutic Strategies to Control and Treatment of Bovine Mastitis

Abstract

Bovine mastitis, which is an inflammation of the mammary gland frequently resulting
from bacterial infection, causes the majority of economic losses to the dairy producers. The
prevalence of mastitis in dairy cattle is relatively high. Bovine mastitis can be classified based
on clinical futures as clinical orsubclinical. Both forms produce significant economic losses due
to rejected milk, degraded milk quality, early culling of cows, drug costs, veterinary expenses
and increased labour costs for the farmer. Moreover, subclinical mastitis is the main form of
mastitis in modern dairy herds, exceeding 20 to 50% of cows in given herds. The cost of
subclinical mastitis is very difficult to quantify, but most of the researchers agree that it can be
up to 40 times more common than clinical mastitis. In India, the estimated loss due to mastitis is
around Rs. 16,702 million per annum. Subclinical mastitis was found more important in India
than clinical mastitis especially in cows (10-50%) and buffaloes (5-20%). The predominant
causal organisms of mastitis are cell-walled bacteria, although mycoplasma, yeast and algae
have also been reported to cause mastitis. Various predisposing factors like physiological,
genetic, pathological or environmental may contribute to the emergence of mastitis in dairy
cattle. Presently antibiotics are used for the treatment of mastitis. However, therapeutic success
rate is poor due to indiscriminate use of antibiotics leading to development of multiple drug
resistant pathogens. Besidesthis, major problemsin bovine mastitis with intracellular pathogens
like S.aureus because of poor cure rate. These facts highlight the need for completely newer
strategies for treatment of mastitis.