TB in deer - early stage indication?

[Buchan]

Not quite, but yes, sort of. If a TB bacteria enters the body and becomes established in the macrophages (white blood cell) it can form small abscesses and the animal can live with this infection for a long time without any ill effect. If there is a change, stress etc, then the disease can re-emerge (which is why TB was so rife in the slums in the UK, tightly packed, poor food). The key point here is that the animal is infected and has lesions. Vectors don't show clinical disease they just move the parasite between susceptible populations.
However, chanelling my inner geek, I looked up some definitions....and it didn't help much and I arrrived at this one: "All vector definitions are wrong, but some are useful"

You don't see large numbers of grossly infected animals becasue the prevalence is relatively low, even in cattle.

 

[SDC7x57]

To give it a bit of human context, my father died at the tender age of 81. He'd had a number of health scares over his latter years, including the emergency repair of an aortic aneurysm at 76 yrs old. Regular medicals every few years...
He got out of bed one morning and slipped or stumbled, fell backwards and hit the steel side rail of their old fashioned bed. He severely bruised his lower back, in the area of his kidneys. A visit to the doctor to check showed nothing. Three weeks later, he was in isolation in hospital with full blown miliary TB. The x-rays of his lungs looked like a snowstorm.
The consultant told us that the most likely scenario was that he got infected during military service in India in WW2. It had never shown any symptoms for all those years until he bruised his kidneys badly, and got run down when he couldn't do his regular exercise. The damage to the soft tissue triggered the long dormant TB, and that was it....
Family members were tested, his neighbours were tested - nothing. He was in his twenties during WW2, so it had been lurking in there for a long, long time.

By the way, Buchan, the consultant called him 'the best example he'd ever seen of a dormant HOST'

 

[Sharpie]

Once you've got it, you've got it, for life. Fortunately if you have a decent immune system it may never become a problem. As with deer, and I presume other wild animals. The others mostly just linger off and die in the wild, or their setts, I suppose.

http://www.tbfreeengland.co.uk/assets/4148

As a child of the '60s, tested, reactor, I suspect it may be lingering inside me, as with about half of my classmates. Spitting in the street, even spittoons, weren't entirely considered anti-social back then, nor was the livestock tested until 1954 AFAIK.

Brucellosis was the big worry back then. Nowadays it seems you can't even trust a hospital sandwich not to have Listeria, actually best never to enter a hospital unless you absolutely have to. Pasteurising milk helped. Though raw tastes much nicer.

Though apparently 5-10% of people carrying it may develop full blown TB at some point, if they become weaker.

If you travel widely, it's still out there, and potentially a killer, we're running out of drugs to treat the nastier versions, even if the GPs spot it before it's gone too far.

Fact Sheets | General | Latent TB Infection vs. TB Disease | TB | CDC

Check out this fact sheet to learn more about the differences between latent TB infection and TB disease.

www.cdc.gov

Trends in tuberculosis in the UK | Thorax

 

[ileso]

So if Tb is to be blamed on badgers and deer and us unfortunately at a high level in Britain ,why is it we don’t see large numbers of badgers and deer with full blown Tb ,answer -they are vectors carrying the disease unless their own immune system is down and they contract it .
Pedantic is me to a tee lol.

by that definition humans are also vectors, I had TB and it took about 6/8 months before it became full blown and the bacteria took over.

 

[ileso]

Once you've got it, you've got it, for life.

Fact Sheets | General | Latent TB Infection vs. TB Disease | TB | CDC

Check out this fact sheet to learn more about the differences between latent TB infection and TB disease.

www.cdc.gov

Trends in tuberculosis in the UK | Thorax

not so. its hell to get rid of but todays antibiotic cocktails will.

 

[foxdropper]

There is also another very little known type of Tb my vet called soil born Tb which effects the tissue on a animal from the outside .Had a terrier once that was bitten by a fox top of her head as per norm but this one went from bad to worse with a vet bill of over 2 g to cure it .She was my brood bitch at the time hence the amount I was willing to spend on her .

 

[fjer20]

The skin test for TB in farmed deer is very inaccurate, however it is the only test available to us in the UK. There is a blood test for TB used in New Zealand amongst deer farmers which is much better at identifying the disease, however it has not yet been passed by the EU/UK to use over here

The clinical signs of TB in farmed deer are very similar to those in many of the other health issues they can suffer from, so it is generally hard to categorically identify it at a glance

There have been a number of papers written that support a belief that deer are a dead end species for TB - they contract it but do not pass it on