Survey of human and bovine tuberculosis infection on dairy farms in southwestern China
Abstract Background Tuberculosis is a zoonotic chronic infectious disease that can be transmitted through respiratory secretions, causing simultaneous infection in both people and cattle. The aim of our study was to identify the co-infections of Mycobacterium tuberculosis between human and cattle in dairy farms in Sichuan Province, southwest China.Results We selected 6 large-scale dairy farms and 5 small-scale dairy farms in Sichuan Province, southwest China, as research sites. A total of 378 dairy farm workers (except one pregnant woman)were screened for tuberculosis symptoms and examined by X-ray radiographs. One worker was diagnosed with tuberculosis, but the sputum culture result was negative, and no strain was obtained. The purified protein derivative (PPD) skin tests of 10224 dairy cows showed that 99 cows were positive, with a positive rate of 9.7‰. The Oesophageal-Pharyngeal (OP) secretions of PPD-positive cows were cultured, and 21 strains were obtained. After amplifying and sequencing the 16SrDNA, hsp65 and rpoB genes and the ITS region, sequence alignment in BLAST showed that these strains were nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM)(18 Mycobacterium nonchromogenicum , 1 Mycobacterium hiberniae , 1 Mycobacterium arupense and 1 Mycobacterium chitae ).Conclusion This study indicated that PPD-positive cows on dairy farms were infected with NTM rather than Mycobacterium bovis . Cross-infection of tuberculosis between humans and cows on dairy farms has been controlled.