Dairy Cattle Health: Mastitis, Milk Quality, and Antimicrobial Resistance from a One Health Perspective
A special issue of Pathogens (ISSN 2076-0817). This special issue belongs to the section "Bacterial Pathogens".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 2427
Special Issue Editor
Interests: epidemiology; mastitis epidemiology and control; mammary gland immunity; antimicrobial resistance; One Health approach; public health
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Among the factors affecting milk production, mastitis continues to play an important role. Furthermore, reducing the incidence of mastitis in dairy herds is essential to improve milk quality, safety, animal welfare, and the overall sustainability of dairy herds. In the last century, a large number of studies have focused on the use of vaccination and biological response modifiers to control mastitis. However, until the beginning of this century, the use of antimicrobial therapy was considered the most effective and simplest way to achieve mastitis control, although the sustainability of this approach was questionable.
The recognition of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a critical global health problem has led to the need for the prudent use of antibiotics to reduce the potential role of mastitis therapy in the development of AMR. Reducing the use of antimicrobials in dairy herds can be achieved by improving herd management, but also by improving the immune defenses of cows, through a reduction in mastitis incidence. Therefore, there is renewed interest in the scientific community in how to improve udder immune defenses. The availability of new molecular methods to study these aspects in detail, as well as tools to analyze differential cell counts, offer new and exciting opportunities to assess the udder immune response and to develop new tools to modulate it, in addition to increasing the accuracy of mastitis diagnosis.
In this context, Pathogens will launch this Special Issue that is dedicated to "Dairy Cattle Health: Mastitis, Milk Quality, and Antimicrobial Resistance from a One Health Perspective" to gather the most recent and relevant results on this topic and offer new sustainable approaches to control mastitis and improve milk quality and safety.
Both original research and review articles are welcomed. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Omics studies on udder immune mechanisms;
- Mastitis vaccine development and application;
- Udder immune modulators;
- Differential cell counts to assess udder immune response;
- Immune components as mastitis diagnostic tools.
Prof. Dr. Zecconi Alfonso
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- udder immune defenses
- inflammation
- milk leukocytes
- mastitis control
- One Health approach
- immune components in milk
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