A mathematical model of the effects of chronic carriers on the within-herd spread of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia in an African mixed crop-livestock system.

Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP) is a respiratory disease of cattle; CBPP is caused by Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. mycoides small colony. CBPP is a major cause for concern for African countries (because of mortality, animal-production losses and cost of control). The clinical form of the disease is the more infectious (contagion occurs essentially through coughing). However, chronic lung lesions with viable mycoplasmas can persist in recovering cattle. Animals presenting these lesions might have a time-delimitated infectious phase. Such carriers are suspected to generate field outbreaks (although this hypothesis remains debated). We investigated the potential quantitative effects of these chronic carriers on the within-herd CBPP spread. Data were collected during a longitudinal field herd survey in a mixed crop-livestock system in the Ethiopian highlands. Two stochastic Markov-chain models' outputs (seroconversion dynamics, basic reproduction ratio R0, cumulative clinical incidence and risk of herd infection) were compared given different hypotheses on the carrier infectiousness. The late seroconversions observed in the field data were fitted correctly only for the highest carrier infectiousness we considered (mean chronic duration of 1 year and carriers 50-times less infectious than clinical cases). Although sensitivities (in terms of disease impact in the herd) were in general negligible when the carrier infectiousness was low (e.g. when carriers were assumed to be 1000-times less infectious than clinical cases), they rapidly became important when the infectiousness increased.