The vaccine Biolumpivaxin, developed jointly by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Biovet, will enable the ‘differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals’ (DIVA) through genetic markers detected through quick blood tests.
India’s drug regulatory authority has approved a vaccine for cattle and buffaloes against lumpy skin disease (LSD) that also marks them as vaccinated and could help curb the spread of infection and mitigate economic losses.
Biovet, an Indian animal vaccine producer, announced on Monday that the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation had approved a marker vaccine against LSD, a contagious viral infection that has killed over 200,000 animals and threatened farmers’ livelihoods in multiple states since 2022.
The vaccine Biolumpivaxin, developed jointly by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Biovet, will enable the “differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals” (DIVA) through genetic markers detected through quick blood tests. The unvaccinated animals can thus be identified and vaccinated.
LSD can lead to fever, swollen lymph nodes, and lumps under the skin. It can lower milk yields from infected cattle. Scientists believe that the infection — spread by the bites of flies, mosquitoes and ticks — entered Asia from Africa more than a decade ago and slipped into India six years ago.
India’s animal husbandry and dairying department had by September 2022 documented LSD across 251 districts in 15 states. The highest deaths from LSD have occurred in lactating and pregnant cattle, which serve as a direct source of income through milk sales, ICAR scientists noted in a 2022 report.
“The regulatory approval has come at an appropriate time,” said Naveen Kumar, a virologist formerly with the National Centre for Research on Equines, Hissar (Haryana), who was the first to isolate the LSD virus in India from an outbreak near Ranchi in 2019.
“We’re expecting fresh outbreaks during the summer of 2025,” Kumar said.
Scientists believe that the massive outbreak of 2022 swept across the country, infecting nearly 90 per cent of cattle and building natural immunity in them.
“But natural immunity wanes in about two years. The vast majority of the cattle that acquired natural immunity through infection during 2022 are likely to have become susceptible again and we also have new populations not exposed to the 2022 outbreaks,” Kumar said.
“Hence, outbreaks are likely this year, particularly during the post-monsoon months when the populations of flies and mosquitoes increase.”
During the 2022 outbreak, milk production had decreased by up to 26 per cent in some states.“If LSD continues, India and other countries will face major milk shortage(s),” Kumar and Bhupendra Nath Tripathi, director of the animal sciences division at the ICAR, said in a report published in the journal Virulence in 2022.
Biovet’s production facility in Mallur, Karnataka, can produce up to 500 million doses of Biolumpivaxin annually, the company has said. The vaccine is now “ready for commercial rollout” but the production timelines will hinge on the government’s decision on procuring the vaccine, a scientist associated with the ICAR said.
Vaccines with DIVA markers could be a key tool to control disease outbreaks in densely populated livestock areas, a scientist with the ICAR said. DIVA vaccines could help segregate the vaccinated cattle from unvaccinated cattle and limit economic damage from the outbreaks.
You can now read the most important #news on #eDairyNews #Whatsapp channels!!!
🇮🇳 eDairy News ÍNDIA: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaPidCcGpLHImBQk6x1F
