Seroprevalence of yersiniosis in slaughter pigs due to Yersinia enterocolitica

摘要

Yersinia enterocolitica comprises a fascinating heterogeneous group of bacteria, which has challenged the capabilities of applied and basic microbiologists, epidemiologists and toxicologists (Swaminathan et al., 1982). The infection with this organism causes a protean disease (Bottone, 1997) leading to gastro-enteritis, food-poisioning, fever, abdominal pain, pseudo-appendicitis and polyarthritis in man (Ahvonen et al., 1973; Pal et al., 1982) and several infectious conditions in animals; primarilydiarrhoea and deaths in piglets (Zeng, 1982.) The occurrence of yersiniosis has been reported from several parts of the world (Swaminathan et al., 1987; Hunter et al., 1983; Gourden et al., 1999). Although almost all the animals, domestic as well as wild, serve as reservoirs of these organisms for human infections, swine has been implicated as the major reservoir of Y. enterocolitica serotypes associated with human infection (Hunter et al., 1983). Y. enterocolitica 0 : 9 shares antigens with Brucella,that causes brucellosis, a zoonotically important bacterial disease of pigs, characterized by abortion, still born or weak piglets, infertility and lameness. Such sharing of antigen leads to false positive reactions with Brucella in pigs (Akkermans and Hill, 1972; Mittal and Tizard, 1979 a). This has prompted several investigators to conduct seroprevalence studies in pigs (Falcao and Giorgi, 1980; Staronienwicz, 1986). However, in India, reports on Y. enterocolitica infections in pigs are scanty (Krishnappa 1976; Singh and Narayana, 1988; Rao et al., 1991) and its epidemiology is far from clear. The objective of this study was to determine the seroprevalence of important serotypes of Y. enterocolitica in slaughter pigs.