A STUDY OF BORRELIA ANSERINA INFECTION (SPIROCHETOSIS) IN TURKEYS

Although avian spirochetosis has been endemic in many parts of the world for several decades, it has only recently been positively identified in North America (Hoffman, Jackson, and Rucker, 1946; Hoffman and Jackson, 1946). Ward and Gallagher (1920) and Kaupp (1922) stated that some workers have suspected its presence in the United States, but no positive diagnoses wN-ere made. Burroughs (1947) reported the first finding of this spirochete in ticks in the United States w^hen he discovered that specimens of Argas persicus sent to him from Texas wvere infected. The disease is caused by Borrelia anserina (Spirochaeta anserina), which was first described from geese in the Caucasus by Sakharoff in 1891. Marchoux and Salimbeni (1903) in Brazil were the first to report a natural outbreak in fowls and also to incriminate Argas persicus as the arthropod vector. Since then it has been reported as a major cause of mortality in fowl in many parts of the wi-orld. Recent reviews of the literature are given by Knowles, Das Gupta, and Basu (1932), Reis and Nobrega (1936), Sreenivasan and Sankaranarayan (1945), and El-Dardiry (1945). Knowles, Das Gupta, and Basu (1932) give an excellent review\ of 180 papers covering the period of 1891-1931. Stavitsky (1948) gives a good general discussion of the three genera of pathogenic spirochetes. Since the disease has only recently been reported in this country, and since there are only casual references in the literature to its natural occurrence in turkeys previous to the accounts of Hoffman et al. (1946), it seemed advisable to conduct experiments with this strain in turkeys. This paper reports the results of these experiments as wN-ell as a historical discussion of the disease and studies on a second field outbreak in turkeys.