Parasitic bronchitis in cattle - new chances for prevention of a continuous problem?

The bovine lungworm Dictyocaulus viviparus is the causative agent of parasitic bronchitis in cattle. This pasture-borne parasitosis is of substantial economic impact in cattle farming and threatens about 50% of German cattle herds. Cattle which survive the infection built up cm immunity that protects for 6 - 12 months against a repeated occurrence of the disease. Thereby, protection is mainly based on Immoral antibodies. This given fact, which is the development of a naturally induced, antibody-mediated immunity, offers the possibility to develop a recombinant vaccine against the bovine lungworm. This is an objective of the EU-funded project "Paravac - Vaccines against helminth infections". In this project different recombinantly expressed lungworm proteins, which are the muscle protein paramyosin and different parasitic enzymes, will serve as vaccine candidates. These will be tested in vitro as well as in vivo for their protective potential. If development of a recombinant vaccine for routine prophylaxis succeeded, dictyocaulosis could be prevented without the use of anthelmintics in future.