EXPERIENCES ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AN IN TRAMAMMARY INFUSION WITHOUTCONTAINING ANTIBIOTICS .3. COMPARATIVE-STUDY ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PURIFIED PROPOLIS-CONTAINING UDDER INFUSION

Effectiveness of the soft propolis-containing preparation (Provet intr amammary infusion A.U.V., Apipharma) was studied in cows with acute ma stitis (n of affected quarters: 311) on 7 large-scale dairy farms. The cows were randomly divided into two groups, of them 200 received the experimental and 111 an antibiotic preparation (Tetra-Delta A.U.V, Upj ohn) intracysternal. The treatments were repeated daily during 3 to 8 days. If it was reasonable, after judging the treatment ineffective, o ther preparations were applied. Besides the clinical examination, milk samples were collected for bacteriological investigation, for the det ermination of somatic cell counts, NAGase and ATR activities before th e first treatment (basic sample), as well as 17 to 24 days following t he last treatment (control sample). The ratios of clinically effective treatments were approximately comparable in both groups (66 and 64 %, Table 1) and it corresponded to the Hungarian experiences. Nearly the same number of treatments were necessary to obtain a symptomless stat e. In case of Provet-treated cows, persistent in infection of udder qu arter were confirmed more frequently at the time of control investigat ion (first of all in case of S. aureus and S. uberis infections) and i n connection with this, the mastitis markers more frequently referred to subclinical udder alterations. Tables 3 to 8 show the effectiveness of treatments in case of individual pathogens (S. aureus, S. dysgalac tiae, S. uberis, A. pyogenes, E. coli and other streptococci) in the g roups treated by Provet and Tetra-Delta. In Table 10, the effectivenes s of treatments are grouped according to the severity of clinical symp toms expressed in point values. It was found that the effectiveness of Provet-treatment fell behind that of conventional antibiotic treatmen ts in case of major Gram-positive pathogens while in other cases it wa s comparable with them. However it renders difficult the situation of users that they should make a decision on the therapeutical method onl y on the basis of clinical symptoms and thus, under practical conditio ns, they can not recognize the therapy-resistent cases in advance.