Seroprevalence of bovine brucellosis in Uttar Pradesh

Brucellosis is a major health problem in farm animals causing heavy economic losses. To create a database on various important animal diseases, including brucellosis in the country, serosurveillance in 17 randomly selected districts of Uttar Pradesh state was carried out from April, 2001 to March, 2004 monitoring and surveillance. Of the total population, 5% blood samples were collected randomly from cattle and buffaloes. Overall prevalence of bovine brucellosis was observed 7.25% (75 cases, cattle-12.77% and buffaloes-3.55%) by AB-ELISA, 4.73% (49 cases) by STAT and 2.90% (30 cases) by RBPT out of 1034 serum samples (415 cattle and 619 buffaloes) screened. Prevalence of Brucella antibodies was higher in female animals (16.73% in cattle and 4.18% in buffaloes) than in males (12.94% in cattle and 1.41% in buffaloes). Similarly, sexually mature animals (>3 years of age) were found to be affected more (15.20% in cattle and 4.40% in buffaloes) than the immature ones (<3 years of age, 15.20% in cattle and 2.29% in buffaloes). Cattle in Pilibhit district and Buffaloes in J.P. Nagar were affected slightly higher than those in other districts under study.