Assessing the potential impact of Salmonella vaccines in an endemically infected dairy herd

Salmonella spp. in cattle contribute to bacterial foodborne disease for humans. Reduction of Salmonella prevalence in herds is important to prevent human Salmonella infections. Typical control measures are culling of infectious animals, vaccination, and improved hygiene management. Vaccines have been developed for controlling Salmonella transmission in dairy herds; however, these vaccines are imperfect and a variety of vaccine effects on susceptibility, infectiousness, Salmonella shedding level, and duration of infectious period were reported. To assess the potential impact of imperfect Salmonella vaccines on prevalence over time and the eradication criterion, we developed a deterministic compartmental model with both replacement (cohort) and lifetime (continuous) vaccination strategies, and applied it to a Salmonella Cerro infection in a dairy farm. To understand the uncertainty of prevalence and identify key model parameters, global parameter uncertainty and sensitivity analyses were performed. The results show that imperfect Salmonella vaccines reduce the prevalence of Salmonella Cerro. Among three vaccine effects that were being considered, decreasing the length of the infectious period is most effective in reducing the endemic prevalence. Analyses of contour lines of prevalence or the critical reproduction ratio illustrate that, reducing prevalence to a certain level or zero can be achieved by choosing vaccines that have either a single vaccine effect at relatively high effectiveness, or two or more vaccine effects at relatively low effectiveness. Parameter sensitivity analysis suggests that effective control measures through applying Salmonella vaccines should be adjusted at different stages of infection. In addition, lifetime (continuous) vaccination is more effective than replacement (cohort) vaccination. The potential application of the developed vaccination model to other Salmonella serotypes related to foodborne diseases was also discussed. The presented study may be used as a tool for guiding the development of Salmonella vaccines.