Practical advances most relevant to veterinary practice are highlighted: genetic markers that may contribute to breeding programs after independent validation to produce naturally resistant cattle, goats, sheep, and buffalo, and gene-expression signatures that may sharpen diagnosis and disease staging.
Abstract
Simple Summary Brucellosis imposes heavy economic burdens on livestock and poses a persistent zoonotic threat. Although infection rarely causes death, it commonly triggers abortion and stillbirth; however, the genomic and immunological drivers of this variable clinical outcome are largely unknown. This review brings together scattered findings from genetics, genomics, and transcriptomics to explain how both the animal host and the bacterium shape disease outcome. We highlight practical advances most relevant to veterinary practice: genetic markers that may contribute to breeding programs after independent validation to produce naturally resistant cattle, goats, sheep, and buffalo, and gene-expression signatures that may sharpen diagnosis and disease staging. We also clarify why antimicrobial resistance in Brucella may involve regulatory, metabolic, and chromosomal mechanisms that are not fully captured by classical acquired resistance-gene databases. By identifying where current evidence is strong, weak, or missing, this work offers researchers and practitioners key research priorities for advancing genetics-informed disease control, improving animal welfare, and reducing zoonotic transmission.
Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) is a highly contagious transboundary viral disease of sheep and goats that causes major economic losses and livelihood disruption across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Goats are often more severely affected than sheep, particularly in endemic smallholder systems, where high turnover, nutritional stress, and limited veterinary infrastructure sustain viral transmission. Despite effective live attenuated vaccines and the ongoing FAO–WOAH Global Eradication Programme, PPR remains widely distributed, indicating that vaccination alone is insufficient without understanding of host, viral, and environmental determinants of disease persistence. This review synthesizes current knowledge on three interrelated pillars of PPR prevention and control in goats: epidemiology, immunology, and host genetics. We summarize the epidemiological drivers of PPR transmission and how these factors shape disease burden in endemic settings. We review the immunobiology of PPR virus (PPRV) infection and vaccination, focusing on innate antiviral sensing, adaptive immune protection, virus-induced immunosuppression, and field determinants of vaccine performance. Finally, we examine the emerging evidence for host genetic resilience to PPR, with emphasis on immunogenomic and transcriptomic findings and the relevance of indigenous breeds such as the Black Bengal goat as genomic resources. Current evidence suggests that genetic resilience to PPR is likely polygenic and remains insufficiently characterized, though genomic and transcriptomic tools offer opportunities to identify markers of reduced susceptibility, milder disease, or improved vaccine response. Sustainable control of PPR in goats will require integrated strategies combining mass vaccination, surveillance, improved husbandry, and host-focused immunogenomic research to strengthen herd resilience and accelerate progress toward global eradication.
M. A. Islam, Saifur Rahman, Md. Shafiqul Islam et al.· Viruses· 0 citations
This review systematically synthesizes key advances over the past decade concerning host-Eimeria interactions, molecular regulatory mechanisms, and novel control strategies, while contextualizing these findings with earlier seminal discoveries.
Simple Summary Theileria orientalis is a tick-transmitted parasite that infects cattle worldwide and was long considered harmless. However, in recent decades, severe outbreaks causing anaemia, reproductive losses, and deaths have been reported in several countries, drawing increasing attention from the veterinary and scientific communities. Disease severity depends largely on the parasite genetic type, with the Ikeda and Chitose genotypes being the most dangerous. Diagnosis can be challenging, particularly in animals that carry the parasite without showing clinical signs. Treatment options remain limited, and no vaccine is currently available. Based on a comprehensive search of the available scientific literature, this narrative review brings together current knowledge on how this parasite is classified, how it spreads, how it causes disease and how infections can be managed. It also highlights the areas where research is still lacking, including a better understanding of which tick species can transmit the parasite and the development of effective vaccines. As tick distributions continue to expand due to climate change, understanding and controlling this infection are becoming increasingly important.
Maria Felício, S. Zúquete, Inês L. S. Delgado et al.· Animals· 0 citations
This review critically synthesizes recent advances in the epidemiology, genomics, pathogenesis, diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccine development and integrated one health control strategies of anaplasmosis in animals to address the evolving epidemiology of this economically and zoonotically important disease.
Rajbir Singh, A. Verma, P. S. Maurya et al.· Indian Journal of Animal Res...· 0 citations
Bovine leukaemia virus (BLV) establishes lifelong infection of predominantly B lymphocytes and causes enzootic bovine leukosis, yet most infected cattle remain outwardly healthy. This mismatch between biological persistence and visible disease has encouraged under-recognition in many cattle industries, even where herd-level prevalence is high. This critical narrative review evaluates BLV as a silent threat by integrating evidence on viral persistence, host and viral determinants of proviral burden, transmission ecology, production and welfare consequences, diagnosis, surveillance, control, and the unresolved question of human-health relevance. Literature was selected through live searches of accessible biomedical and veterinary sources, verification of bibliographic metadata and digital object identifiers, and critical comparison of mechanistic, observational and field-intervention evidence. The evidence is strongest that BLV is maintained by transfer of infected cells, that proviral load is a useful but incompletely standardised marker of infectiousness and disease risk, and that national or herd-level control is feasible when repeated testing is coupled with removal, segregation and rigorous prevention of blood transfer. Evidence for reduced longevity and production is persuasive at herd and lifetime scales, but simple seropositivity is an imprecise predictor; high proviral load, persistent lymphocytosis, parity, management and survivorship materially modify observed effects. Immune dysregulation is biologically credible and supported by vaccination and immunological studies, although causal links with individual secondary diseases remain less secure. Reported detection of BLV markers in human tissues is inconsistent across laboratories and does not establish zoonotic causation. The central policy failure is therefore not absence of control options, but failure to align diagnostic purpose, herd prevalence, economic incentives and sustained implementation. Future progress requires harmonised proviral-load standards, longitudinal multi-herd studies, transmission experiments reflecting modern production systems, economic evaluations that include welfare and replacement costs, and rigorously blinded human studies with sequence-level confirmation and contamination control.
Kanika Nirmalkar, Apurv Pandey, A. Dubey et al.· Journal of Advances in Biolo...· 0 citations
Melioidosis is a serious infectious disease caused by the environmental Gram-negative bacterium Burkholderiapseudomallei. The organism is naturally found in soil and stagnant water, particularly in tropical regions. The disease is a major public health challenge, but it is frequently unrecognized in endemic areas such as Southeast Asia and northern Australia. Individuals with occupations that involve agricultural work pose a greater risk to infection, with exposure to contaminated environments being common. However, despite many people having contact with the pathogen, only a small proportion develop melioidosis. This evidence suggests the presence of both bacterial and individual host factors that influence the risk of infection and the severity of the disease.
Recent advances in genomic research provide new opportunities to explore the interplay between bacterial variation and human genetic diversity in infectious diseases. Ongoing research investigates combined analyses of the pathogen and the host in the context of integrated genomic approaches. Projects such as BurkHostGEN obtain biological samples from infected patients but also healthy populations and analyze host DNA, gene expression, and the genetic variation of the bacterium. Researchers investigate environmental sources, such as the presence of B. pseudomallei in household water, to determine the presence and diversity of the pathogen. Integrating microbial genome-wide association studies in conjunction with host genetic data represents an emerging strategy to identify the genetic factors associated with the risk for infection, disease progression, and clinical outcomes in patients with melioidosis.
In the long term, such comprehensive genomic studies can improve the overall understanding of melioidosis and further contribute to research of infectious diseases with environmental transmission.
Keywords: Genomic Research; Melioidosis; Burkholderiapseudomallei; Host–pathogen interaction; Infectious disease epidemiology; Environmental transmission
Kanchuboyina Divya, K. Vanitha, Akali Sowjanya et al.· International journal of med...· 0 citations
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