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Researcher takes a deeper dive into Influenza A

An epidemiologist at Colorado State University is studying how Influenza A is being spread in dairy cows.

For the last 10 months, Dr. Jason Lombard and a team of researchers have been evaluating the milk, urine and nasal samples of dairy cows in California and Colorado.

“In terms of implementing biosecurity practices, which is what we think will stop this disease from spreading, we first need to know how it’s spreading.”

Lombard says the virus has been spread cow-to-cow, via birds like sparrows and pigeons, milk and the air.

“It’s not found frequently at all in air samples, probably less than 5 percent of the samples we’ve collected on known infected farms, but it’s another possibility of how the disease is spreading.”

The virus is easily detected in milk. Lombard says the data varies on how long it’s present.

“Trying to understand what’s potentially going on there will help us determine how it’s being spread,” he says. “If we have herds with multiple cows that are shedding in sample collection after sample collection then we can detect if it’s more virus in that environment leading to exposure in more cows.”

He says if a cow is showing clinical signs of Influenza A, it’s likely other cows in the herd are shedding the virus, even if they don’t have clinical signs.

Lombard says there are surprises every day, but important pieces of the puzzle are coming together. Researchers are also evaluating antibody responses from infected animals in terms of serum and milk antibody responses.

He says the research is ongoing and it could be three to six months before the results are published. Read more here.

Brownfield interviewed Lombard at the National Institute for Animal Agriculture Conference in Kansas City.