Mycoplasma californicum is a causal agent involved in several bovine diseases including mastitis, pneumonia, and reproductive system diseases. In Japan, bovine mastitis caused by M. californicum has been increasing since 2005. The epidemiological analysis of the causal bacterium is indispensable in preventing this infectious disease, but the useful molecular epidemiological analysis method for M. californicum is still being established. Therefore, transmission events of M. californicum in bovine mastitis were unexplained. In this study, we established pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA), and analyzed bovine mastitis cases in Japan. PFGE and MLVA for M. californicum showed high discriminatory power, with these methods highly correlated with each other. Moreover, the analysis of PFGE and MLVA suggested that persistent infection is often due to a failure to identify asymptomatic infected cows, and thus M. californicum is transmitted with the movement of cows or heifers.
(Dairy Hygiene Research Division)
References:
1) Hata E. et al (2014) Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 80(24):7717-7724 (doi: 10.1128/AEM.02488-14)
