Research: Foot and mouth vaccination
6 March 2006
An analysis of data from the 2001 foot and mouth disease epidemic suggests how vaccination could best be used to control a new outbreak.
The images of mass graves and pyres of burning animals will live long in the memory. The foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001 was controlled by a highly controversial slaughter policy that cost billions of pounds and thousands of animals' lives.
One silver lining is that detailed data were captured during the epidemic, allowing computer models to be generated with which to test the impact of alternative strategies, such as vaccination.
A multidisciplinary international team led by Dr Matt Keeling at the University of Warwick has looked at the impact of 'ring vaccination' – selectively vaccinating animals in a ring around an affected farm.
They predicted that the optimal ring size is highly variable, depending on several logistical factors, and postulated some relatively simple strategies that could have a major impact on the spread of the disease – such as rapidly vaccinating cattle on farms in the neighbourhood of infected premises as soon as they are identified.
Update
A more detailed account of this work appears in
‘Wellcome Science’ - see Supermodels: Mathematical modelling of infectious diseases.
External links
- Tildesley MJ et al. Optimal reactive vaccination strategies for a foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK. Nature 2006;440(7080):83–6.