ABSTRACT
AIM: The current study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practices pertaining to antibiotic usage among the field veterinarians who serve as nodal officers playing a crucial role in disseminating knowledge to the farmers regarding livestock management practices in India. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A pilot study was conducted in which 106 of the 173 field veterinarians of Haryana, India, agreed to contribute through their valuable participation in the study. The collected data were critically analyzed by simple descriptive statistics, and the responses were ranked using Garrett's ranking method. RESULTS: Our study found that most of the clinicians were aware of the fundamental clinical aspects of antibiotic resistance (AR), i.e., the general causes and transmission of resistance, response during treatment failure, and safe disposal of hospital waste. Further, implementation of "antibiotic stewardship" (rational/responsible use of antibiotics) and interruption of AR transmission by means of cross-kingdom pathogens are two ways to restrict the spread of resistant pathogens which were not in the clinical purview of majority of the clinicians. This highlights a lack of awareness and scope of improving clinician's knowledge pertaining to AR. Moreover, we got to know the methodology adopted by farmers for disposal of infected milk from diseased udders as well as their attitude toward diseased and unproductive animals. CONCLUSION: This study provides snippets of the current animal husbandry practices prevalent at the field level which would assist to plug in the gaps of knowledge regarding AR among the veterinarians as well as the general public and serve to reduce its deleterious impacts in Indian animal farming as well as in the world through the concept of "One World, One Health."
ABSTRACT
Twelve healthy lactating Murrah buffaloes of similar parity (3rd) between 90 and 120 days of lactation, selected from the herd of National Dairy Research Institute (Karnal, India) and maintained at managemental practices as followed at the Institute they were included in this experiment. The animals were divided into two groups based on their production level in previous lactation. The average milk production level of group 1 and II was 9.3 and 6 lit/day, respectively. Blood was collected from these buffaloes on three occasions 10 days apart. The lymphocytes were separated and cultured in RPMI 1640 medium with PHA-P for 24 h at 37°C in a humidified CO(2) incubator (95% air and 5% CO(2)). The lymphocyte responsiveness was also evaluated in response to the in vivo heat stress and in vitro cortisol. Mitogen-induced stimulation index was not affected by production level (P < .01). Stimulation index was significantly reduced (P < .01) in both the groups when cortisol was added at 2.0 ng level in the culture. However, in heat-stressed buffaloes stimulation index did not vary despite increasing levels of cortisol, thus indicating that lymphocyte may become cortisol resistant during periods of acute heat stress. The results showed that lymphocyte proliferation response can be effectively used to study buffalo cell-mediated immunity in vitro.
