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Selected highlights from other journals

wild boar and red deer are important maintenance hosts for bovine tuberculosis (TB) in continental Europe. Understanding Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC) excretion is important in developing strategies to control bovine TB in free-ranging populations. This study investigated MTC excretion by four different routes (oronasal, bronchial-alveolar, faecal and urinary) in wild boar and red deer. One hundred and sixteen wild boar and 62 red deer hunted in Portugal were collected in order to investigate the MTC excretion routes from naturally infected wild animals. From these animals, the head and distal third of the neck (66 wild boar and 33 deer), the lungs and proximal third of the trachea (66 wild boar and 54 deer), faeces from the rectum (93 wild boar and 41 deer) and urine samples from the urinary bladder (three wild boar and one deer) were collected. Bronchial-alveolar lavages were obtained by aseptically pouring 100 ml of sterile water into the trachea, inverting the lungs and collecting the washes from the trachea. Oronasal lavages were collected by pouring 100 ml of sterile water into the pharynx and collecting the washes from the nose and mouth. dNA was extracted from the samples and lavages and screened for MTC dNA. MTC dNA was amplified in all four excretion routes, with oronasal and bronchial-alveolar shedding being detected with a higher frequency than faecal shedding. The majority of shedders yielded MTC concentrations less than 103 colony forming units (cfu)/g or ml; however, 28.2 per cent of wild boar and 35.7 per cent of red deer were found to be ‘super-shedders’, yielding MTC concentrations greater than 103 cfu/g or ml. The authors conclude that the study provides evidence for the existence of a proportion of super-shedders within naturally infected wild boar and red deer populations, and that these super-shedders may be responsible for a disproportionately large amount of MTC excretion from infected wild ungulates. They suggest that their results may have implications for the design of control programmes in multihost pathogen systems where these species are maintenance hosts for bovine TB.