Mazur V. Epizootic significance and biological properties of mycobacteria selected from the musk-rat

The thesis is devoted to the studying of the bovine tuberculosis epizootic situation in Ukraine and in the world, to defining the causes of the wide dissemination of this disease, to researches in interconnection of natural ecological niches of Mycobacterium bovis with the stationarity of farms infected by tuberculosis, to the experimental investigation of the mycobacteria tuberculosis separated out of the body organs of musk-rats, that inhabit the inner waters of Ukraine. The epizootic features of bovine tuberculosis are staionarity and panzootic expansion. Mycobacteria that were isolated from the muskrats, that inhabit the inner waters of Kyiv region, had formed the colonies that were typical for the bovine tuberculosis pathogenic species, and they caused the death with peculiar post-mortem changes in guinea pigs, the skeptical form of disease and death in rabbits and generalized form in chickens. The sequential passaging of the mycobacterial strain "Musk-rat" through the body of the guinea pigs, rabbits and chickens, as long as the interspecific passages, caused the death of all the animals. In rats the first passage caused the infection process with the microorganism persistence in the circulatory system without causing visible post-mortem changes, and the second passage ended up with the tubercle formation. The mycobacterium strain "Musk-rat" excels the M. bovis strain in the contents of long-chained fatty acids in 2,9 times. The mycobacteria that were isolated from the musk-rats were identified by molecular-genetic-PCR method as M. bovis.