What is the relationship between level of infection and ‘sickness behaviour’ in cattle?
Introduction
It is now well established that health challenges, such as infection with a pathogen or stimulation of the immune response, may lead to changes in animal behaviour (Hart, 1990, Larson and Dunn, 2001, Weary et al., 2009, Szyszka et al., 2012). Such behavioural changes may have diagnostic value, as these can precede any clinical signs of the condition (Quimby et al., 2001, Huzzey et al., 2007, González et al., 2008, Kyriazakis and Tolkamp, 2010).
The question whether the onset and extent of the behavioural changes are related to the size of the health challenge, such as the infectious dose of a pathogen, remains largely unanswered. There is little information about the relationship between pathogen dose and change in behaviours. The few exceptions are studies, mainly in rodents, suggesting a negative relationship between challenge dose and social exploration (Edwards, 1988, Bluthé et al., 1996), anxiety (Bassi et al., 2012) or activity (Johnson and von Borell, 1994, Skinner et al., 2009). There is also indirect evidence of a possible relationship between pathogen dose and the different dimensions of feeding behaviour (González et al., 2008). In all these experiments, however, infection either occurred naturally, or only a narrow range of infective doses was used. As a consequence, these do not allow conclusions about the form of the relationship. Knowledge of such relationships has both theoretical and diagnostic value, as it would allow targeted interventions and will therefore enhance animal health and welfare.
There are at least two possible forms of the relationship, shown on Fig. 1. The first is that above a certain dose the change in behaviour is of the same magnitude for a wide range of doses that may lead to (subclinical) diseases. Only at high pathogen doses that may lead to clinical disease, further changes in behaviour become apparent and may be linearly related. This expectation comes from the studies on pathogen-induced anorexia; these have demonstrated that over a wide range of infective doses with macro- or micro-parasites the reduction in food intake is very similar for a variety of animals and pathogens (as summarised by Kyriazakis et al., 1998, Sandberg et al., 2006, Kyriazakis, 2010). The second possible form is that increasing pathogen doses lead to increasing changes in behaviour. These two relationships will have different (intervention) consequences when using behaviour as a predictor of the level of infection. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between the infective dose of a macro-parasite, Ostertagia ostertagi, and a number of behaviours in growing cattle. O. ostertagi is the most significant parasite affecting cattle in temperate climates (Anderson, 1988, Rinaldi and Geldof, 2012). As the selected range of macro-parasite doses was expected to lead to subclinical infections (Szyszka et al., 2012, Szyszka et al., 2013), we hypothesised that the relationship would be of the first form, i.e. that the effects on the behaviours would be of similar magnitude across all doses. The behaviours focused upon in this study and considered representative of ‘sickness behaviour’ were chosen on the basis that they had previously been found to change as a consequence of an O. ostertagi infection (Szyszka et al., 2012, Szyszka et al., 2013). They consisted of activity, general posture and feeding behaviour. The behavioural changes were expected to occur as a consequence of the pathophysiological consequences (abomasal damage) induced by the parasite.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
The experiment took place at the facilities of Newcastle University after approval of the experimental protocols by the Animal Experiments Committee and under license according to the UK Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act for regulated procedures.
Faecal egg counts
The consistency of the faeces varied throughout the experiment both within and between treatments: up to Day 23 the faeces were similarly solid for all treatments. However, after Day 23 a number of animals in the H treatment showed signs of diarrhoea (maximum 5 out of 6 on Day 37), as did some in the M treatment (maximum 3 out of six on Day 34); this was not the case for the L and C treatments. The FEC of the C animals remained at zero throughout the experiment. For the other treatments, eggs
Discussion
The objective of this study was to investigate the form of the relationship between macro-parasite dose and a number of behavioural responses in growing cattle. The health challenge used was an O. ostertagi infection, previously shown to affect several aspects of the behaviours addressed here (Forbes et al., 2007, Szyszka et al., 2012, Szyszka et al., 2013). Three different infective doses of the parasite were used; as their range was expected to lead to subclinical infections, the null
Acknowledgement
This project was sponsored by EBLEX (English Beef and Lamb Executive).
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