Abstract

A serological survey was conducted between 2009 and 2011 in six Border States and two other states that lie on the major cattle trek routes in Nigeria with the objective of determining the seroprevalence of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in cattle and demonstrate the evidence of antibodies in sheep, goats and pigs. Four hundred and forty-eight (448) sera were screened for FMD antibodies using the Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) including samples collected during suspected field outbreaks.  Statistics was conducted by using the modified Wald method and two-by-two contingency table. Higher seroprevalence was recorded in cattle samples from Yobe State (82%), followed by those from Plateau (80%), Ogun (77.77%), Taraba (73.50%), Adamawa (68%), Borno (67%), Sokoto (63%) cattle and Bauchi (27.84%), is only in sheep and goat. None of the pig sera obtained from Kaduna was positive. There is no difference in seropositivity between cattle sampled at the border and those from the trek routes. The result confirmed that FMD is still an important cattle disease in Nigeria since the diagnostic procedure employed in this analysis only detect positive serum in FMD infected animals and no history of vaccination was declared for any of the surveyed animals. Based on these results, it will be important to determine the recently circulating virus strains and factors responsible for the widespread seropositivity in order to design appropriate control strategies to limit the effect of FMD particularly on the Nigerian cattle.

Key words: Foot and mouth disease (FMD), Nigeria, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, sero-epidemiology.