Tuberculosis in cattle

Abstract

In view of the lack of M. tuberculosis var. bovis isolations in human material, both from pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculous lesions, the investigation was undertaken whether tuberculosis in the authors' cattle was produced by the bovus or human variety. The negativeness of the M. tuberculosis var. bovis isolation was conditioned to a technical defect, which is the observation of the growth in a glycerol added culture medium for only 42 days, forgetting that the growth of the bovis variety is of a dysgenic type, specially in those media containing glycerol. As far as ethiological lesions in cattle are concerned, it was found that at least 40% are of tuberculous origin, produced by M. tuberculosis var. bovis, and 25% are pyogenous, produced by Staphylococcus aureus. No lesions produced by fungus were demonstrated.