Prevalence of Burkholderia mallei in Equids of Remount Depot, Sargodha, Pakistan

Glanders is a highly contagious disease of solipeds caused by Burkholderia mallei. Nodules and ulcers are either seen in the upper respiratory tract and lungs (i.e. glanders) or the skin (i.e. farcy). Infection always results in persistence of the agent and intermittent shedding. Progressive loss of efficiency and fatal outcome resulting in massive economical losses forced veterinary authorities worldwide to start disease control including mass testing using complement fixation test and/or malleinisation, and culling of positives. In the last decade, the number of outbreaks in Asia and South America has been steadily increasing and glanders proved to be a re-emerging transboundary disease again. Pakistan has demonstrably been an endemic country for the last 120 years. Actual data however on the presence of disease among Pakistani army equid are absent. A seroprevalence study of equids rearing establishment, Remount Depot, Sargodha Pakistan having the densest working equine population from Sargodha district was made in the year 2009. A total of 920 (horses: 75; mules: 844; donkey: 01) serum samples were collected from apparently healthy paddock equids. The complement fixation test (CFT) and the highly specific and newly validated immunoblot (IB) technique were used for serodiagnosis. No positive animal (horse, mule and donkey) was found. Glanders seems to be restricted to remote, sporadic pockets of endemicity and may cause outbreaks after being introduced in native populations by asymptomatic shedders. The diagnostic specificity of the ccPro antigen based CFT was 68.39%, and of the CIDC antigen based CFT 65.87%.