Holm Zerbe

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich | LMU · Zentrum für Klinische Tiermedizin

Prepartum vaccinations against neonatal calf diarrhea pathogens are administered in late pregnancy to provide passive immunity to calves through protective colostral antibodies. Potential non-specific effects of the vaccine on maternal innate immune responses and disease susceptibility during the sensitive transition period have not been addressed...

Behavioral problems in reproductively healthy mares are a challenging issue that is successfully treated with bilateral ovariectomy (BO). This laparoscopic procedure represents an alternative to conservative treatment for mares not intended for breeding and results in high owner satisfaction regarding behavioral improvement. However, a pathohistolo...

Background In dairy cattle, mastitis causes high financial losses and impairs animal well-being. Genetic selection is used to breed cows with reduced mastitis susceptibility. Techniques such as milk cell flow cytometry may improve early mastitis diagnosis. In a highly standardized in vivo infection model, 36 half-sib cows were selected for divergen...

Background: Prepartal vaccinations against newborn calf diarrhea pathogens are performed in the last weeks of pregnancy, with the intention to induce a maternal adaptive humoral immune response and to protect calves in the first weeks of life via colostral transferred pathogen-specific antibodies. There is evidence that vaccination-related innate i...

Simple Summary In cases of birth difficulties in sheep, caesarean sections can be life-saving. It is, however, important for farmers to know whether the ewe is likely to conceive again. In field cases following birth difficulties, many factors such as the problematic delivery itself or any underlying health problems will also influence these outcom...

Dystocia has been attributed to a significant percentage of peripartal ewe deaths and is also a major contributor to perinatal lamb mortality. Field data are however commonly confounded by management, husbandry and underlying flock health issues and frequently lack a control group. The true influence of dystocia is therefore difficult to assess fro...

The adequate expression of cytokines is essential for the prevention and healing of bovine endometrial inflammation. This study investigated the intra-uterine concentration of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)1B and its antagonist IL1RA in cows with and without subclinical endometritis (SE). Samples were taken from 37 uteri at the abatt...

Benchmarking is an important tool to improve health and profitability but requires available data from similar production systems for comparison of performance. This study was conducted to generate a first dataset regarding dairy goat management and kid health in Southern Germany. Participation was voluntary, and 33 farmers contributed to a questio...

The insertion of an endogenous retroviral long terminal repeat (LTR) sequence into the bovine apolipoprotein B (APOB) gene is causal to the inherited genetic defect cholesterol deficiency (CD) observed in neonatal and young calves. Affected calves suffer from developmental abnormalities, symptoms of incurable diarrhoea and often die within weeks to...

In the cattle industry, in vivo or in vitro embryo production combined with genotyping and cryopreservation technologies allows the selection and conservation of embryos carrying genes for desirable traits. This study aimed to assess the efficiency of a vitrification method suitable for in-straw warming of biopsied in vivo derived (IVD) bovine embr...

Background Dystocia is common in sheep, and foetal causes are predominant. Among maternal causes, insufficient cervical dilatation is the most frequent problem. Uterine torsion has been considered rare by many authors. Objectives This study was conducted to investigate causes of dystocia in sheep presented for veterinary attention, and particular...

Retention of fetal membranes (RFM) is a major reproductive disorder in dairy cows. An appropriate immune response is important for a physiological expulsion of the fetal membranes at parturition. Our study aims to provide a deeper insight into characteristics of fetal and maternal macrophages in bovine term placenta. We used transmission electron m...

The inadequate maternal recognition of embryonic interferon τ (IFNτ) might explain subfertility in cattle. This study aimed at modeling the inducibility of type 1 interferon receptor subunits 1/2 (IFNAR1/2), mimicking competition between IFNτ and infection-associated interferon α (IFNα), and simulating type 1 interferon pathways in vitro. Endometri...

Clinical records of all 212 ewes undergoing emergency caesarean surgery at a veterinary teaching hospital between January 2008 and December 2019 were evaluated retrospectively. Their age ranged from 1 to 10 years (median = 4 years), with German merino the predominant breed (48.1% of cases). The most frequently diagnosed indications were insufficien...

Polledness in cattle is an autosomal dominant trait. Previous studies have revealed allelic heterogeneity at the polled locus and four different variants were identified, all in intergenic regions. In this study, we report a case of polled bull (FV-Polled1) born to horned parents, indicating a de novo origin of this polled condition. Using 50K geno...

Uterine epithelial cells (UEC) and migrated polymorphonuclear cells (PMN) play important roles in the uterine defence against microbial infection. The aims of the present study were to investigate i) whether undiluted uterine secretions modulate the expression of genes associated with the innate immune response in UEC and PMN in vitro, ii) whether...

Mastitis is one of the major risks for public health and animal welfare in the dairy industry. Two of the most important pathogens to cause mastitis in dairy cattle are Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli). While S. aureus generally induces a chronic and subclinical mastitis, E. coli is an important etiological pathogen...

Infection and inflammation of the mammary gland, and especially prevention of mastitis, are still major challenges for the dairy industry. Different approaches have been tried to reduce the incidence of mastitis. Genetic selection of cows with lower susceptibility to mastitis promises sustainable success in this regard. Bos taurus autosome (BTA) 18...

Background: In dairy herds, mastitis causes detrimental economic losses. Genetic selection offers a sustainable tool to select animals with reduced susceptibility towards postpartum diseases. Studying underlying mechanisms is important to assess the physiological processes that cause differences between selected haplotypes. Therefore, the objectiv...

Background: In dairy herds, mastitis causes detrimental economic losses. Genetic selection offers a sustainable tool to select animals with reduced susceptibility towards postpartum diseases. Studying underlying mechanisms is important to assess the physiological processes that cause differences between selected haplotypes. Therefore, the objective...

Title: In vivo model to study the impact of genetic variation on clinical outcome of mastitis in dairy uniparous cows Background: In dairy herds, mastitis causes detrimental economic losses. Genetic selection offers a sustainable tool to select animals with reduced susceptibility towards postpartum diseases. Studying underlying mechanisms is import...

Ketosis (acetonaemia) is a metabolic disorder that occurs in cattle when energy demand exceeds energy intake and results in a negative energy balance. The course of the disease often starts with a subclinical phase, so early detection is crucial for decisive strategies. The aim of this study was to determine whether daily motion activity could be u...

The susceptibility of animals to periparturient diseases has a great effect on the economic efficiency of dairy industries, on the frequency of antibiotic treatment, and on animal welfare. The use of selection for breeding cows with reduced susceptibility to diseases offers a sustainable tool to improve dairy cattle farming. Several studies have fo...

Subclinical endometritis (SE) in cattle is defined as clinically unapparent inflammation of the endometrium. It is reported to impair fertility in affected cows and causes economic loss within the dairy industry. A gold standard for diagnosis of SE has not been set. Uterine cytology and histopathology are both applied, but low agreement between the...

The original article [1] contained an error whereby the captions to Figs 2 and 3 were mistakenly inverted; this has now been corrected.

Title: In vivo model to study the impact of genetic variation on clinical outcome of mastitis in dairy heifers Background: In dairy herds, mastitis causes detrimental economic losses. Genetic selection offers a sustainable tool to select animals with reduced susceptibility towards postpartum diseases. Studying underlying mechanisms is important to...

Abstract Background A major challenge in modern medicine and animal husbandry is the issue of antimicrobial resistance. One approach to solving this potential medical hazard is the selection of farm animals with less susceptibility to infectious diseases. Recent advances in functional genome analysis and quantitative genetics have opened the horizo...

The implementation of a vitrification method suitable for direct transfer of biopsied embryos would help to increase the genetic improvement of cattle and reduce the costs of embryo transfer. The aim of our study was to compare the success rates of two vitrification devices for intact (I) and biopsied (B) bovine in vitro-produced embryos. The VitTr...

Background: In the mammary gland transcriptome of lactating dairy cows genes encoding milk proteins are highly abundant, which can impair the detection of lowly expressed transcripts and can bias the outcome in global transcriptome analyses. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a method to deplete extremely highly expressed...

Mastitis causes substantial economic losses and animal suffering in the dairy industry. The trend toward larger herd sizes complicates the monitoring of udder health in individual animals. Infrared thermography has successfully been used for early mastitis detection. However, manual thermogram analysis is time consuming and requires a skilled exami...

In breeding programs, the application of a vitrification method suitable for direct transfer of biopsied embryos can increase the genetic improvement of cattle and help reduce the costs of embryo transfer. The aim of this study was to determine the in vitro survival of biopsied vitrified blastocysts using the new VitTrans device (Morató and Mogas 2...

In recent years, organic dairy farming has become increasingly important in Germany. Organic farmers must not only implement the EU organic regulations, but are often bound by the regulations of their organic farming associations. Some of these regulations are of relevance to veterinary medicine, although these are often unknown to veterinarians. F...

As sheep produce similar pregnancy associated glycoproteins (PAGs) to cattle, a commercially available bovine visual pregnancy test based on the detection of PAGs (Visual‐PAG‐Test) was evaluated in sheep. The test was performed with whole blood (WhB), plasma (P) and serum (S) of 163 pregnant and 153 non‐pregnant ewes. Additionally, 11 pregnant ewes...

Objective: In cows with uterine torsion, clinical parameters and different treatments were evaluated with regards to their success. The aim of the study was to investigate important factors for diagnosis and prognosis of uterine torsion and their consequences for treatment decisions. Material and methods: The study presents 114 cases of uterine...

Bovine mastitis is a disease of major economic effects on the dairy industry worldwide. Experimental in vivo infection models have been widely proven as an effective tool for the investigation of pathogen-specific host immune responses. Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli) are two common mastitis pathogens with an opposi...

It is a well-known fact that sheep are sensitive to excessive copper intake. However, especially in well monitored flocks being fed hay plus a commercial sheep feed, copper intoxication is not the first thing that comes to mind when a sheep shows signs of reduced general condition.

In cows, retained fetal membranes (RFM) are a major problem in reproduction. The timely detachment of fetal membranes after parturition requires well coordinated maturation processes in the placenta. One feature of placental maturation in cows is a prepartal decline in the number of binucleate trophoblast giant cells (BNC) in the fetal chorion. Pre...

The etiology determines quality and extent of the immune response after udder infection (mastitis). Infections with Gram negative bacteria (e.g. Escherichia coli) will quickly elicit strong inflammation of the udder, fully activate its immune defence via pathogen receptor driven activation of IκB/NF-κB signaling. This often eradicates the pathogen....

retained fetal membranes in cattle

Excessive stimulation of the TLR4 axis through LPS reduces the expression of some cytokine genes in immune cells, while stimulating the expression of immune defense genes during a subsequent bacterial infection. This endotoxin tolerance (ET) is mediated via epigenetic mechanisms. Priming the udder of cows with LPS was shown to induce ET in mammary...

Background and objective: Perinatal calf mortality is a current problem in dairy farming with regards to ethics and economic losses. Optimizing calving management by frequent monitoring helps increasing the survival rate. The objective of this study was to evaluate the breed and parity dependent applicability of a recently introduced automated par...

Zusammenfassung Durch Zunahme der Betriebsgrößen bei gleichbleibender Arbeitskraft, leistungsbedingte Krankheitsanfälligkeit der Tiere und Zwang zur Wirtschaftlichkeit der Betriebe kommt automatisierten Überwachungssystemen im Milchviehbereich immer größere Bedeutung zu. Der Markt bietet bereits eine Reihe von Systemen zur Überwachung der Milchkuh...

The bovine gastrointestinal tract is a natural reservoir for commensal and pathogenic Escherichia coli strains with the ability to cause mastitis. Here, we report the whole-genome sequences of six E. coli isolates from acute mastitis cases and six E. coli isolates from the feces of udder-healthy cows.

The role of the recently-described interleukin-32 in Staphylococcus aureus-induced mastitis, an inflammation of the mammary gland, is unclear. We determined expression of IL-32, IL-6 and IL-8 in S. aureus- as compared to E.coli (Escherichia coli)-infected bovine mammary gland epithelial cells. Using live bacteria we found that in S. aureus-infected...

Intra-mammary bacterial infections can result in harmful clinical mastitis or subclinical mastitis with persistent infections. Research during the last decades closely examined the pathophysiology of inflamed udders. Initial events after pathogen perception but before the onset of mastitis have not been examinedin vivo The objective of this study w...

Mastitis remains a major disease of cattle with a strong impact on the dairy industry. There is a growing interest in understanding how cell mediated immunity contributes to the defence of the mammary gland against invading mastitis causing bacteria. Cytokines belonging to the IL-17 family, and the cells that produce them, have been described as im...

The study aimed to use infrared thermography (IRT) to evaluate the changes in udder surface temperature after induction of Escherichia coli mastitis in the right hind quarter. Over a time period of 24 h before to 24 h post-inoculation, thermograms of both hind quarters were taken every 2 h to determine maximum (Tmax) and average (Tavg) temperatures...

The distal compartments of the udder are the first to interact with invading pathogens. The regulatory and effector functions of two major teat regions [Fürstenberg's rosette (FR); teat cistern (TC)] are largely unknown. The objective of this study was to establish an in vitro model with explants of the FR and the TC to analyse their response towar...

Lambs born prematurely are often unable to breathe due to pulmonary immaturity and a lack of surfactant production. Attempts to deliver live, moderately preterm lambs from critically ill ewes in late pregnancy are therefore often unsuccessful. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential benefits of repeated administration of dexametha...

Adiponectin, one of the most abundant adipokines in circulation, has a role in nutrient partitioning through its insulin-sensitizing actions. In addition, anti-inflammatory effects of adiponectin have been demonstrated. For dairy cows, both aspects are relevant since impaired insulin regulation of energy metabolism is considered as etiologic key co...