Assessment of defined antigen cocktails for sero-diagnosis of tuberculosis

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Central Laboratory for Evaluation of Veterinary Biologics

2 Veterinary Serum and Vaccine Research Institute, Abbasia, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

To achieve a better diagnostic assay for the bovine tuberculosis, antigen cocktail composed of Ag85; rESAT-6 and rMPB-70 protein antigens were compared to the bovine tuberculin using ELISA test. The antigen cocktail could detect 80 % of the tuberculin negative cattle showed lesions in the post mortem examination compared to 60% with the PPD-B. For the tuberculin positive cattle, the results were 70% and 80% for the antigen cocktail and PPD-B respectively. On the other hand the  antigen cocktail gave only 26.6% in sera of the tuberculin positive animals with non visible lesions compared to 53.3% with the PPD-B. 70% of the tuberculin negative cattle with localized lesions in the P/M examination reacted with the antigen cocktail compared to 50% only with the PPD-B. The results concluded the ability of the antigen cocktail to overcome the false negative results obtained with the tuberculin test and to detect the active recent infection of cattle which allow the rapid eradication of the infected animals from herds before the spread of the disease.

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