Clinicopathological on cattle naturally infected with lumpy skin diseases

Abstract

Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is one of the major viral diseases causing great economic loss for
the cattle herds raising in Viet Nam. This study was designed to quantify clinical signs and gross
lesions among LSD-infected cattle. Cattle households from twelve provinces belonging to seven
agricultural ecology zones were selected for this study. The clinical signs, morbidity, and mortality
rates were calculated. Pathological changes of postmortem lesions were observed. The main clinical
signs of cattle infected with LSDV revealed high fever, anorexia, nasal discharge, lacrimation, and
salivation in the invasion phase. In the rash phase, 76.2% of cattle households had cattle appearing
hard, rounded, painless nodules from 0.5 to 5cm in diameter with variable number. Other clinical signs included painful and hard breathing (41.1%), the necrotic nodule lesion formed scar tissues
(54.3%), and weight loss (45.8%). Mild or absent clinical signs were 21.6% among cattle infected
households. The average morbidity percentage was 39.5%. The percentage of farms that had the
recover cattle from 10 to 19 days was 29.2%. Nine provinces had an average mortality percentage
of cattle under 10%, and three provinces had an average mortality percentage of cattle above 20%.
Scars on the skin were the most common manifestation of sequelae, accounting for 66.2% of cattle
infected households. These results accumulated data on the clinical symptoms and the gross lesions
of cattle naturally infected with lumpy skin diseases in Viet Nam. These data are the scientific basis
to support the development of screening methods for early diagnosis and contribute to the global
knowledge of lumpy skin disease.