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Fasciolosis vaccine: why 44 trials changed nothing
Cattle, sheep, goats, and buffalo still have no licensed fasciolosis vaccine to buy. A systematic review pulled together 44 studies and found the antigen side of the problem well supplied while the reporting side was not, with the strongest trial satisfying just 13 of 37 checklist items. Until that changes, control rests on flukicides such as closantel, on pasture choices, and on cutting snail habitat. What the systematic review actually screened Three databases were queried, two of them returning 751 and 5,000 records and the third returning nothing at all. Title screening dropped 5,599 records and left 152 candidates, and after deduplication and full text review 44 studies made it…
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Theileria in cattle and sheep: survey results and gaps
Theileria in cattle is common enough that the clinical cases are only the visible part of it. A countrywide molecular survey put 34.4 percent of 6,224 cattle and 11.5 percent of 1,467 sheep positive by PCR. Theileria orientalis reached all 17 surveyed provinces, and most carriers looked perfectly normal on the day of sampling. Why subclinical infection is the real problem Theileria is a genus, not a diagnosis. The parasites inside it differ in which ticks carry them, in which hosts they settle, and in how much damage they do once they are established. A herd that looks well will not reveal any of that. Herd decisions usually run on…
