The effects of acoustic pulse therapy on somatic cell count in cows with subclinical mastitis

Abstract

Clinical and subclinical mastitis in cattle are a huge problem for their economic impact all around the world. A new type of non-invasive therapy was developed for cows with (sub)clinical mastitis: Acoustic Pulse Therapy (APT). APT is a new adaptation of shockwave therapy, designed to penetrate the udder to stimulate the local immune system and thereby hoping to cure (sub)clinical mastitis. This report conducts a first view on a field study in the Netherlands about the effect of APT on cow somatic cell count (cSCC) of cows with subclinical mastitis. Cows with a cSCC ≥400,000 derived from DHI (Dairy Herd Information) were sampled for Qscout MLD©, a machine that provides a milk total leukocyte count (TLC) and leukocyte differential for all four quarters. Cows with a TLC of ≥200,000 at one or two quarters were enrolled in this trial. Treatment with APT was completed on a study group of 69 cows in total, cows were admitted randomly to the intervention group (I), which received APT and to the non-intervention group (NI), which received no therapy. DHI data from four consecutive DHI was gathered, whereas DHI 0 is the start from which cows were enrolled in the trial. DHI 1, 2 and 3 were the three subsequent DHI. TLC data from four Qscout analyses was gathered. TLC 0 is the TLC after which cows were admitted to the trial, TLC 1 is fourteen days after the start of treatment with APT. TLC 2 was gathered at DHI 1. TLC 3 and TLC 4 were only gathered if the cows had a cSCC ≥250,000 cells/ml at DHI 2 and DHI 3. This report discusses the data obtained so far. A Split-Plot ANOVA for repeated measures was used to analyse the cSCC and TLC data with different time points (cSCC0 and cSCC1 and TLC 0, 1 and 2) in combination with the treatment groups (I and NI). cSCC at DHI 0 and 1 and treatment groups had no significant difference between both groups (p= 0.053). Analysis of TLC at TLC0, 1, 2 and treatment groups showed no significant difference between both treatment groups (p=0.994). A Fisher’s exact test was done to determine whether there was an association between treatment with APT and rate of recovery. Four different analyses were done. Recovery defined as cSCC ≤250,000 cells/ml for the first DHI post-treatment showed 31.3% recovery in the intervention group, whilst 24.1% of the cows recovered in the non-intervention group (p=0.580). Recovery defined as cSCC ≤400,000 cells/ml for the first DHI post-treatment showed 40.6% recovery in the treatment group, whilst 37.9% recovered in the non-treatment group (p=1.000). Recovery defined as cSCC ≤250,000 cells/ml for both consecutive DHI post-treatment had a recovery of 12,5% for the intervention group and 18.2% for the non-intervention group (p=1.000). Recovery defined as cSCC ≤400,000 cells/ml for both consecutive DHI post-treatment showed a recovery of 25.0% for the intervention group and a recovery of 27.3% of the non-intervention group (p=1.000). No significant association between treatment with APT and recovery was found in all four analyses.