Professor’s paper named “Editor’s Choice” in journal

An article written by Dr. Klibs Galvão, a professor of dairy medicine in UF’s department of large animal clinical science, received an “Editor’s Choice” designation from the Journal of Dairy Science.

The article, “Unraveling the immune and metabolic changes associated with metritis in dairy cows,” appears in the December issue of the journal and can be found here. The “Editor’s Choice” designation was made by the journal’s editor-in-chief, Paul Kononoff.

Metritis, an acute and severe uterine infection that occurs shortly after calving, is one of the most prevalent and costly diseases to the dairy industry. Galvão and his collaborators have been working to decipher the interplay between the host and the pathogen to help understand why so many cows develop metritis.

Dr. Klibs Galvão at the UF/IFAS dairy farm in Hague.

In his previous work, Galvão and his team observed that the microbes in the uterus of cows that develop metritis are virtually identical to healthy cows in the first two days after parturition, but opportunistic pathogens take over after that in what veterinarians call a dysbiosis of the uterine microbiome. A similar phenomenon is common in several other diseases in animals and humans.

“The question is why this was happening,” Galvão said.

In this current work, led by Galvão and his PhD student, Dr. Segundo Casaro, they looked at immune and metabolic changes around calving that could be contributing to the development of metritis. They observed that obesity prepartum led to systemic inflammation pre- and postpartum and immune tolerance postpartum, which may lead to failure to prevent bacterial infection, and development of metritis.

“Obese women also have increased rates of postpartum infection; therefore, this work has important translational application,” Galvão said. “The key now is to develop strategies to prevent this immune dysregulation from happening.”

The work was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.