Abstract
BackgroundEarly and unambiguous detection of bovine tuberculosis (bTB), a significant disease of cattle worldwide, is necessary to control the spread of infection to other animals and humans. Current testing strategies are laborious, time consuming and heavily reliant on host responses that do not distinguish bTB from other mycobacteria. We report the presence of a pathogen signature, liparabinomannan (LAM), as a potential biomarker for bTB infection.FindingsFifty-five animals (uninfected [n = 33], bTb [n = 10] and exposed cases [n = 12]) from a well characterized bovine serum repository were screened for the presence of LAM using a commercially available ELISA. Analysis showed that LAM had a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 91.7% for bTB detection (bTB positive versus bTB exposed animals).ConclusionLAM detection easily separated bTB infected animals from bTB exposed and negative controls. We propose that pathogen related markers, such as LAM, should be included with current testing strategies as a battery diagnostic for bTB.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1756-0500-7-559) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
And unambiguous detection of bovine tuberculosis, a significant disease of cattle worldwide, is necessary to control the spread of infection to other animals and humans
We propose that pathogen related markers, such as LAM, should be included with current testing strategies as a battery diagnostic for bovine tuberculosis (bTB)
Several studies have shown the presence of lipoarabinomannan, a major cell wall glycolipid found on pathogenic mycobacteria, in sera and urine [10,11,12,13]
Summary
LAM detection separated bTB infected animals from bTB exposed and negative controls.
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