Prevalence of brucellosis in cattle at Potengi region, Rio Grande do Norte state, Brazil

Abstract

Brucellosis is an infectious disease that can infect production animals on the risk of causing economic damages, as well as human health. In Brazil there is a low number of studies on the prevalence of brucellosis, therefore this study had the objective of investigating the occurrence of it in the Potengi region, RN, Brazil it's distribution related to sex, age, time of the year and municipality of origin. This study was a quantiative design on the type of epidemiological survey and the data was collected along with the Institute of Farm's Defense and Inspection of Rio Grande do Norte (IDIARN), from august 2007 to august 2008. The results showed that Brucellosis was present in the region in study with a prevalence of 6,02%. Most of the cases happened in female sex animals (82,2%), and with age between four and five and a half years (70%). The prevalence was relatively decreasing in 2008 when compared to 2007 and most of the municipality of the region (64%) presented cases. Keywords: Animal health, epidemiology, Brucella sp, cattle