Occurrence and diagnosis of Abomasal Ulcers in cattle

• Grant number: 23/00768-8
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: July 01, 2023
• End date: June 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Veterinary Medicine - Animal Clinics and Surgery
• Principal Investigator: Maria Claudia Araripe Sucupira
• Grantee: Maria Claudia Araripe Sucupira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia (FMVZ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Bruno Leonardo Mendonça Ribeiro ; Fernando Ferreira

Abstract

Abomasal ulcer is a multifactorial illness that affects ruminants, and in cattle it can be more frequent at certain stages of life. Even in its silent form, it can cause great damage to the producer. When present, clinical manifestations are inespecific. It may exhibit milder symptoms such as anorexia, change in behavior or progress to tachycardia, tachypnea, abdominal discomfort and blackened feces due to the presence of blood, resulting in anemia. In the worst cases extravasation of the abomasal contents into the cavity occurs, and evolves to septic shock and death. As the disease can present itself silently, there is a gap to perform the diagnosis of abomasal ulcer with precision, impairing the treatment and the lifespan of the animals. The objective of this project is to verify the occurrence of abomasal ulcers in adult cattle, to verify if there is a difference in the frequency between animals raised on pasture and confined, as well as to correlate biomarkers that may help in establishing the prognosis or even in the early diagnosis of the ulcer of abomasum in adult cattle. In the first study abomasum of 500 female or male beef cattle at slaughtering age from pasture (n=200) and confined (n=300) finishing systems will be analyzed. Post-slaughter will be collected abomasum that will be analyzed for the presence, location in the organ, number and type of ulcer(s). When there is doubt in ulcer's classification the lesion will be sampled for subsequent processing and histological diagnosis. The second study will use 300 cull dairy cows from a São Paulo's slaughtered house. After desensitization a blood sample will be collected, after evisceration feces samples will be collected and the abomasum will be analyzed for identification and classification of lesions for later correlation with gastrin, pepsinogen and with other less specific markers such as fibrinogen, components of the blood count, total protein, albumin, AST, GGT, CK, urea, creatinine, ionizable calcium, beta-hydroxybutyrate and occult blood and EPG in feces. In this way, the present research project aims to estimate the most prevalent lesions, if there is a relationship with breeding system, age, sex and slaughter weight and in study two it is intended to correlate the lesion with the evaluated indicators as well as its severity to improve the disease's prognosis and diagnosis. (AU)