Bovine mastitis is a disease complex which occurs in acute, gangrenous, chronic, and subclinical forms of inflammation of the bovine udder, and is due to a variety of infectious agents. Animal care, hygiene, and management are important factors in this dairy cow disease of great economic importance. Mastitis continues to be the most costliest disease of dairy animals affecting the entire Dairy industries throughout the world. With overuse of antibiotics in bovine mastitis and continuing appearance of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, search for alternative substances for antibiotics is imminent. Over time, some bacteria have developed ways to dodge the effects of antibiotics. Widespread use of antibiotics is thought to have made evolutionary changes in bacteria that allow them to survive these powerful drugs. With many of the antibiotics already being used in bovine mastitis are also used in human medicine, and with the way antibiotic resistant bacteria can easily transfer their resistance traits to unrelated bacteria once inside the human body, this can be a major problem we have to face in the near future. Therefore, the bacteriocins produced by micro organisms may represent new antimicrobial peptides with potential applications in the prevention and treatment of bovine mastitis. Recent focus on managing subclinical mastitis and minimizing antibiotic use in food animals has led to a renewed interest in evaluating bacteriocins as a tool in managing mastitis. In this review we have focus on the overview of mastitis, direct and indirect measures corresponding to the diagnosis of infection, bacteriological analysis of milk and exhaustive information on infected quarters, pathogen involved, pathogenesis of the mastitis in dairy cows, existing antibiotic treatments and function of bacteriocin. An extensive review is also made on mastitis applications that exploit their attributes, potential drawbacks in their use, and current status of bacteriocinbased mastitis products, possible alternative for application of bacteriocins from bacteria in the prophylaxis, treatment and prevention of this disease.
