Prevalence and Clinico-Therapeutic Management of Bubaline Theileriosis in Marathwada Region of Maharashtra

Abstract

Theileriosis has widely been reported in cattle particularly in crossbred cattle in India with scarce reports on bubaline theileriosis. Hence, the present study was designed with to study the prevalence and clinico-therapeutic management of bubaline theileriosis in Marathwada. Buffaloes admitted to College clinics were screened based on history, clinical signs, and hematology and blood smear examination for theileriosis. Epidemiological aspects, clinical signs, haemato-biochemistry was studied and confirmed cases were treated. Out of 877 clinical cases of buffaloes examined at clinics for of one year, 21 buffaloes were found positive for Theileria spp. with an overall hospital prevalence of 1.6 %. The highest prevalence was observed in Murrah buffaloes < 5 years of age yielding > 4 liters/day during post-monsoon. The typical clinical signs were fever, tachycardia, anorexia, weakness, pale mucosae, swollen lymphnodes, loss of body weight, epistaxis, cutaneous skin lesions and corneal opacity. The haemato-biochemical analysis showed marked microcytic normochromic anemia, leukocytosis, lymphocytopenia and increased levels of bilirubin, SGPT, blood urea nitrogen and creatinine. A therapeutic trial was conducted on 14 clinical cases using oxytetracycline and buparvaquone along with supportive treatment. In this study, the overall efficacy of buparvaquone was found to be 83.33 % in theileriosis affected buffaloes. Bubaline theileriosis is prevalent in the Marathwada region and buparvaquone was found highly effective in early stage of bubaline theileriosis but it failed to improve the clinical condition of the animal in the later stages of the disease.