A team of scientists has announced a small but important step in the further development of a vaccine to prevent bovine tuberculosis in cattle [1]. They have identified a ‘biomarker’ using sophisticated molecular technology bringing benefits in helping to predict vaccine efficacy.

David Williams, chairman of the Badger Trust, which strongly supports vaccination of both cattle and badgers, said: “We welcome this refinement in laboratory technique, part of the progress towards the long-awaited goal of an effective cattle vaccine. This discovery represents constant and encouraging movement in molecular studies and techniques, and it follows steady progression elsewhere”.

Mr Williams recalled recent work showing an indirect protective effect in the unvaccinated cubs of vaccinated badgers [2] and how the presence of liver fluke in cattle interferes with the ability of the commonly-used SICCT ‘tuberculin test’ to ascertain the presence of bTB [3]. Then, just as the Coalition revealed its gross underestimation of badger populations in the proposed ‘pilot’ culling areas of Somerset and Gloucestershire in 2012 [4] two leading scientists spelt out likely consequences of uncertainties in accounting for the proportion of badger populations killed [5].

Mr Williams added: “This work further emphasises the extreme complexity of bTB in cattle which demands a more sophisticated approach to eradication than shooting badgers, particularly in view of the figures recently presented to Parliament in October 2012 [6].

“These showed that without any badgers being killed, but with increasingly effective cattle measures, the bTB toll on farm businesses has been declining steadily over the last five years. There has been a 39 per cent fall in new herd incidents since 2008 - from 5,007 to 3,018. Over the same period the number of individual cattle slaughtered was reduced by 44 per cent – from 39,015 to 21,512.

NOTES

[1] http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1003077(Research funded by Defra, but it had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript).

[2] http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-vaccination-unvaccinated-badger-cubs-tuberculosis.html

[3] http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n5/full/ncomms1840.html

[4] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm121017/text/121017w0001.htm#12101764001054– (Col 296W)

[5] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7400/full/485582a.html

[6] www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06081.pdf