Browsing by Author "Pokki, Laura"

This survey was a part of co-operational project between the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, EVIRA (The Finnish food safety authority) and The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Helsinki. The Project was focused on cattle interdigital phlegmon epidemiology and bacterial etiology. The aim of this thesis was to characterize microbiota in the interdigital area of cattle as well as to determine if the found microorganisms of a sick animals hoof can also be found on healthy animal’s interdigital area. There was also an opportunity to test MALDI –TOF MS suitability for clinical animal microbiology. The experimental part of this study was carried out in the laboratory between 7.10.2013 – 25.5.2014. Plated swab samples were collected from five different farmhouses with a total of 28 healthy animals and 3 suffering from foot rot. For further analysis of isolated samples were used to identify and describe the microbiological tests such as morphology, catalase-test, Gram staining and special-potency antibiotic discs. Part of the isolated bacterial strains chosen was a universal 16S-PCR and amplification of the partial 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The obtained data was compared with MALDI-TOF-Mass spectrometry. Healthy hooves skin bacteria was diverse, and no individual type of species dominated growth. The vast majority of the bacteria were represented by gram-positive facultative anaerobic species. Certain gram negative species such as Fusobacterium necrophorum and Porphyromonas levii dominated growth on primary plates. In addition, these species was found only on samples of Interdigital phlegmon. This result suggests that a healthy hoof skin is not the major source of pathogenic bacterial species and that prevalence of these bacterial species is due to other factors. MALDI-TOF-MS identified the best known pathogens or pathogenic types as F. necrophorum along with P. levii and general types of Bacteroides. Similarly, facultative anaerobes were identified by gram-positive species, including Streptococcus, Staphylococcus and Trueperella pyogenes. In conclusion the findings were in line with other studies, and the species diversity varied considerably in the group of healthy animals. Infected animals had a significantly different profile with pathogenic groups and plates growing severe dominance within these groups. Isolated bacterial samples were used to identify and describe the traditional clinical microbiology studies such as colony and cell morphology examination, Catalase and special-potency antibiotic discs. The results from MALDI-TOF-MS provided useful information about the methodology data for the bacterial library. It is also cost-effective to use.