Abstract
•A sero-survey on young calves to measure recent FMD infections in West Azerbaijan, Iran.•The use of two cut-off values used to estimate prevalence and analyse risk factors for FMD virus infection.•More than 39% of calves tested positive and only 2 out of 281 epi-units had all 30 calves tested sero-negative.•Risk-factors found contributed to further develop the risk-based strategy plan for FMD control in Iran.
In this study, we estimated the level of Foot-and-Mouth (FMD) virus infection in a cattle-dense north-western province of Islamic Republic of Iran and analyzed putative risk factors for FMD infection. Calves (6–24 months of age) from all 17 districts of West Azerbaijan were tested for antibodies against non-structural proteins (NSP-Ab) of FMD virus. A proportional stratification with a minimum of 30 epi-units was applied for 3 different husbandry systems: villages, dairy and mixed farms. Within an epi-unit, 30 calves were sampled. For the interpretation of ELISA test results, we used the 50% inhibition (50PI) cut-off as per producer's instructions and created one at 75% inhibition (75PI) based on the lowest point of the histogram of PI results. This approach resulted in three categories of outcomes; negative (N), low-positive (LP) and high-positive (HP). A generalized mixed-effect model for binary outcomes was used for analysing putative risk factors and was run for both cut-off values.
A total of 8378 calves from 202 villages, 51 dairy farms and 28 mixed farms were eligible for analysis. The percentage of calves testing positive (LP+HP) was 53.7% (95% Confidence interval (CI): 52.6%–54.8%), with 39.6% (95% CI: 38.6–40.7%) testing HP (n=3309) while 14.1% (95% CI: 13.5–15.0%) of calves tested LP (n=1188). Of 281 epi-units sampled, all calves sampled tested negative in only 2 epi-units (0.7% (95% CI: 0.1–2.5%)) and more than 25 calves tested positive in 29 epi-units (10.3% (95% CI: 7.0–14.5%)). Outcomes of regression modelling using the 50 PI cut-off indicated that, for each month increase in age, the odds of testing positive increased 1.01 times (95% CI: 1.00–1.03). The odds of calves testing NSP-positive increased 1.46 times (95% CI: 1.22–1.77) for calves residing in epi-units that had experienced clinical FMD in the 12 months preceding this study. The odds of calves owned by livestock owners who traded livestock testing positive were 1.4–1.6 times higher than those owned by persons not engaged in trading while the odds for calves testing positive in dairy herds was 1.62 (95% CI: 1.10–2.35) times higher compared with calves in villages. The results of the model using the 75 PI cut-off value resulted in comparable estimates, with the age-effect becoming more evident. These results have confirmed widespread FMD infection and were used in developing a risk-based control strategy on FMD, in line with Stage 1 of the Progressive Control Pathway for FMD (PCP-FMD).