A study on the clinical application of insulin sensitivity tests on late pregnancy dairy cows and adaptability probability to predictively diagnose the development of peripartum diseases.

Abstract

This study investigated insulin sensitivity in clinically healthy dairy cows (n=32) in late pregnancy through insulin-stimulated glucose disposal rate (GDR value, %), and examined the associations between GDR value and peripartum diseases. GDR value obtained 10 days before expected calving from dairy cows which developed peripartum diseases(n=6) was 35.8±7.4%, and the value from dairy cows which did not develop those diseases(n=26) was 46.1±8.1%, showing a significantly lower value in the dairy cows that developed diseases (P<0.05). GDR value of cows in late pregnancy showed that the occurrence of disease increases with a decrease in GDR value, but the plasma biochemical components, which have been thought to be highly associated with the development of peripartum diseases in dairy cows, did not indicate obviously abnormal values in late pregnancy, even in the group where peripartum diseases dominantly occurred. In addition, in the analysis for predicting the development of disease, the odds ratio of GDR value was 8 and remarkably higher than those of plasma biochemical components. From these results, this study suggests that the insulin sensitivity test is very useful in predicting the development of peripartum disease
after calving, and has significance in evaluating risks of peripartum and productive diseases.