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SUMMARY:Cattle mixing patterns impact bovine tuberculosis transmission - D
 r Ellen Brooks-Pollock\, Dept. Vet. Med.
DTSTART:20121119T113000Z
DTEND:20121119T123000Z
UID:TALK40779@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Prof. Julia Gog
DESCRIPTION:Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is one of the most challenging lives
 tock diseases globally\, causing a huge economic burden on cattle industri
 es in industrialised and pre-industrialised countries alike. In Britain\, 
 the role of badgers in transmission is often the focus of debate\, while e
 pidemiological principles of interrupting transmission via core groups hav
 e been neglected. In this talk\, I'll present a brief history of bTB in ca
 ttle and its relationship with the human pathogen mycobacterium tuberculos
 is. Motivated by the importance of contact patterns in human disease trans
 mission\, we developed an age-structured transmission model of bTB based o
 n mixing patterns derived from cattle movement data. The results are the f
 irst evidence of how infection risks vary with cattle age. Cattle aged 3 t
 o 4 years old act as teenagers do for human TB\, with high rates of infect
 ion and high numbers of contacts. Consequences for beef and dairy herds ar
 e particularly striking: we estimate a similar annual force-of-infection i
 n beef and dairy herds\, however due to differences in age and mixing patt
 erns\, the mean effective reproduction number is lower in beef. \n
LOCATION:CC43\, Cripps Court\, Queens' College
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