Smith Graham C, Budgey Richard
National Wildlife Management Centre, WOAH Collaborating Centre in Risk Analysis and Modelling, Animal and Plant Health Agency, York, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2025 Jul 21;20(7):e0320830. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0320830. eCollection 2025.
Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a costly disease in Britain and Ireland shared by cattle and badgers (Meles meles), and to reduce the infection in cattle to low levels some form of badger management is considered necessary. We compare the results of a badger field trial where test-positive badgers are culled, and test-negative badgers vaccinated (a TVR approach) with the results of the simulation model originally used to predict the effect of the trial in Northern Ireland. Initial model results depended strongly on whether social perturbation occurred in the badger population following culling, and the field study demonstrated no evidence for such behavior. Here we re-run the model with the initial conditions of the TVR study and with no social perturbation and predict a similar outcome in terms of number of badgers caught, number testing positive, and the substantial decline in prevalence. These results validate our model and demonstrate the utility of such predictive modelling for this disease system. This is particularly important as the UK government moves away from widespread badger culling in England toward more vaccination, as this combined approach of vaccination and selective culling based on test results may give a more robust method of disease management than just vaccination on its own.
牛结核病（bTB）在英国和爱尔兰是一种代价高昂的疾病，牛和獾（欧洲獾）都会感染。为了将牛的感染率降低到低水平，某种形式的獾管理被认为是必要的。我们将一项獾的田间试验结果进行了比较，在该试验中，检测呈阳性的獾被扑杀，检测呈阴性的獾接种疫苗（一种TVR方法），并与最初用于预测北爱尔兰该试验效果的模拟模型结果进行比较。最初的模型结果在很大程度上取决于扑杀后獾群中是否发生社会扰动，而实地研究没有证明存在这种行为的证据。在这里，我们在TVR研究的初始条件下重新运行模型，且不存在社会扰动，并就捕获的獾的数量、检测呈阳性的数量以及患病率的大幅下降预测了类似的结果。这些结果验证了我们的模型，并证明了这种预测模型对该疾病系统的实用性。这一点尤为重要，因为英国政府正从在英格兰广泛扑杀獾转向更多地采用疫苗接种，因为这种基于检测结果的疫苗接种和选择性扑杀相结合的方法可能会提供一种比单纯疫苗接种更有效的疾病管理方法。
