Absence of TB in Iberian ibex (Capra pyrenaica) in a high-risk area
May 29th, 2010
Investigation article published in The Veterinary Record
Mycobacterium bovis is the causative agent of bovine tuberculosis (TB); it has an exceptionally wide host range, which includes goats. In fact, caprine tuberculosis caused by M bovis has been widely studied in domestic goats due to their high susceptibility to infection (O’Reilly and Daborn 1995, Daniel and others 2009, Quintas and others 2010). However, little is known about bovine TB in wild Caprinae. To our knowledge, there has been only a single published report about the presence of this disease in a wild caprine population. In that study, one eight-year-old female Iberian ibex (Capra pyrenaica) out of 450 (0.2 per cent) was diagnosed with bovine TB (Cubero and others 2002). The Iberian ibex is a medium-sized mountain ungulate endemic in the Iberian Peninsula (Herrero and Perez 2008). In this letter we focus on this lack of reports, which could be the result of either a low sampling effort or a real absence of the disease due to unknown mechanisms of resistance.
Mentaberre G., Serrano E., Velarde R., Marco I., Lavin S., Mateos A., de Juan L., Dominguez L., Olive X. and Romeva J.
