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Angus Productions Inc.

December 20, 2010

Needle-Free Injection
In Beef Cattle Examined

Researchers with the University of Manitoba are preparing a study to compare the effectiveness of vaccines administered to beef cattle using conventional needles and syringes to those administered using needle-free injection.

Researchers with the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment (NCLE) expect to begin a one-year study this coming spring to examine the effectiveness of needle-free injection.

Kim Ominski, an associate professor with the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and a researcher with NCLE, says scientists will examine the ability of the animal, as a consequence of the method of delivering the vaccine, to mount an immune response.

"Typically, antibiotics and vaccines are administered to cattle using a conventional needled injection system where whatever the product is that you're delivering goes through the needle and into the animal," Ominski says. "In a needle-free injection system, what it does is, it actually delivers the product transdermally, and the products that we traditionally deliver to cattle are products like either antibiotics to treat disease or vaccines to help prevent disease.”

comment on this storyThe transdermal process may eliminate broken needles, assist in eliminating injection-site lesions and help stop the transfer of disease from one animal to another, Ominski says, adding that researchers are looking at the potential for lower vaccine volume and greater antibody response as a consequence of the transdermal technique.

The work will be conducted on a commercial cow-calf operation, which has cattle calving in both spring and fall.

Ominski says researchers will look at two different vaccine products and whether the immune response differs when using needle-free or conventional injection, based on location of vaccination and on temperature, whether administered during spring or summer.







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