Publications by authors named "Ana Carolina Lopes Antunes"

The emergence and dissemination of antimicrobial resistant pathogens have led to rising concern about the widespread and excessive use of antimicrobials in veterinary medicine. Denmark has implemented several initiatives to reduce antimicrobial use in animals since the 90s, with the Yellow Card scheme implemented in 2010. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effects on antimicrobial use in Danish pig farms of changes in the legislation regarding the Yellow Card, based on analysis of temporal trends in monthly antimicrobial consumption calculated at herd-level from 2010 to 2017.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

With the current trend in animal health surveillance toward risk-based designs and a gradual transition to output-based standards, greater flexibility in surveillance design is both required and allowed. However, the increase in flexibility requires more transparency regarding surveillance, its activities, design and implementation. Such transparency allows stakeholders, trade partners, decision-makers and risk assessors to accurately interpret the validity of the surveillance outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

As our capacity to collect and store health data is increasing, a new challenge of transforming data into meaningful information for disease monitoring and surveillance has arisen. The aim of this study was to explore the potential of using livestock mortality and antibiotic consumption data as a proxy for detecting disease outbreaks at herd level. Changes in the monthly records of mortality and antibiotic consumption were monitored in Danish swine herds that became positive for porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) and porcine pleuropneumonia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Monitoring systems are essential to detect if the number of cases of a specific disease is rising. Data collected as part of voluntary disease monitoring programs is particularly useful to evaluate if control and eradication programs achieve the target. These data are characterized by random noise which makes harder to interpret temporal changes in the data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) has been a challenge for the Danish swine industry. It is important to identify forms of time-dependence in PRRS sero-prevalence among swine herds at country level, in order to allocate resources in an effective manner. This is of particular value if an increase of PRRS sero-prevalence occurs in a particular type of herds and control measures are taken to avoid disease spread downwards the swine production system.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The aim of this study was to assess the potential of using multiple data sources currently available in Denmark for monitoring swine diseases. The study included farms that, based on serology, changed from "negative" to "positive" status for Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), enzootic pneumonia (), and porcine pleuropneumonia () between January 2014 and September 2017. These corresponded to 45 swine farms working as individual operation units (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Epidemiological studies often use data from registers. Data quality is of vital importance for the quality of the research. The aim of this study was to suggest a structured workflow to assess the quality of veterinary national registers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The aim of this study was to explore spatio-temporal mortality patterns in Danish swine herds from December 2013 to October 2015, and to discuss the use of mortality data for syndromic surveillance in Denmark. Although it has previously been assessed within the context of syndromic surveillance, the value of mortality data generated on a regular and mandatory basis from all swine herds remains unexplored in terms of swine surveillance in Denmark. A total of 5010 farms were included in the analysis, corresponding to 1896 weaner herds, 1490 sow herds and 3839 finisher herds.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Disease monitoring and surveillance play a crucial role in control and eradication programs, as it is important to track implemented strategies in order to reduce and/or eliminate a specific disease. The objectives of this study were to assess the performance of different statistical monitoring methods for endemic disease control program scenarios, and to explore what impact of variation (noise) in the data had on the performance of these monitoring methods. We simulated 16 different scenarios of changes in weekly sero-prevalence.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Surveillance systems are critical for accurate, timely monitoring and effective disease control. In this study, we investigated the performance of univariate process monitoring control algorithms in detecting changes in seroprevalence for endemic diseases. We also assessed the effect of sample size (number of sentinel herds tested in the surveillance system) on the performance of the algorithms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) has been a cause for great concern to the Danish pig industry since it was first diagnosed in 1992. The causative agent of PRRS is an RNA virus which is divided into different genotypes. The clinical signs, as well as its morbidity and mortality, is highly variable between herds and regions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The objective was to estimate and characterise the dog and cat population on Maio Island, Cape Verde. Remotely sensed imagery was used to document the number of houses across the island and a household survey was carried out in six administrative areas recording the location of each animal using a global positioning system instrument. Linear statistical models were applied to predict the dog and cat populations based on the number of houses found and according to various levels of data aggregation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF