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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Infectious Diseases
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2024.1487316
This article is part of the Research Topic Exploring Infectious Agents in Ruminant Foot Diseases View all articles

Assessment of immunological response to digital dermatitis pathogen derived antigens following infection, recovery, and reinfection

Provisionally accepted
John W. Coatney John W. Coatney 1Adam C. Krull Adam C. Krull 1Patrick J. Gorden Patrick J. Gorden 1Jan Shearer Jan Shearer 1Samuel Humphrey Samuel Humphrey 2,3Steven Olsen Steven Olsen 2,3Paul J. Plummer Paul J. Plummer 1,4Jennifer H. Wilson-Welder Jennifer H. Wilson-Welder 2,3*
  • 1 College of Veterinary Medicine, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, United States
  • 2 National Animal Disease Center, Agricultural Research Service (USDA), Ames, Iowa, United States
  • 3 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Washington, United States
  • 4 College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, Tennessee, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    We wish to submit the enclosed manuscript to Frontiers in Veterinary Microbiology, and for inclusion in special issue 'Exploring Infectious Agents in Ruminant Foot Disease'. Digital dermatitis is a bacterial infection affecting the skin just above the hoof, causing lameness in production cattle and other ruminants globally. While many factors contribute to disease development, the main pathogens are spirochetes in the genus Treponema. Little work has been done characterizing cellular or memory responses to bacteria in acute digital dermatitis. The use of an inducible model allows for the study of animals with known infection history. The manuscript describes the evaluation of immune responses following experimental induction of digital dermatitis in two groups of cattle, one group developing digital dermatitis lesions, healing the lesions and then re-inducing lesions a second time. The second group of cattle were only experimentally induced a single time. Antibody and cellular responses were measured at the conclusion of the infection period. While protection was observed in some cattle that had been previously infected, no major differences were observed in immune responses between groups. This study indicates that repeated exposure may lead to some protection, but further study is needed to determine the mechanism of that protection.

    Keywords: Data curation, investigation, methodology, Validation, Writing -review & editing. John W Coatney: Formal Analysis, Writing -original draft, Writing -review & editing. Jennifer H Wilson-Welder: Data curation, Formal analysis

    Received: 27 Aug 2024; Accepted: 04 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Coatney, Krull, Gorden, Shearer, Humphrey, Olsen, Plummer and Wilson-Welder. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jennifer H. Wilson-Welder, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Washington, United States

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