Abstract
The use of point of care diagnostics (POCD) in animal diseases has steadily increased over the years since its introduction. Its potential application to diagnose infectious diseases in remote and resource limited settings have made it an ideal diagnostic in animal disease diagnosis and surveillance. The rapid increase in incidence of emerging infectious diseases requires urgent attention where POCD could be indispensable tools for immediate detection and early warning of a potential pathogen. The advantages of being rapid, easily affordable and the ability to diagnose an infectious disease on spot has driven an intense effort to refine and build on the existing technologies to generate advanced POCD with incremental improvements in analytical performance to diagnose a broad spectrum of animal diseases. The rural communities in developing countries are invariably affected by the burden of infectious animal diseases due to limited access to diagnostics and animal health personnel. Besides, the alarming trend of emerging and transboundary diseases with pathogen spill-overs at livestock-wildlife interfaces has been identified as a threat to the domestic population and wildlife conservation. Under such circumstances, POCD coupled with non-invasive sampling techniques could be successfully deployed at field level without the use of sophisticated laboratory infrastructures. This review illustrates the current and prospective POCD for existing and emerging animal diseases, the status of non-invasive sampling strategies for animal diseases, and the tremendous potential of POCD to uplift the status of global animal health care.
Highlights
Progress in animal disease surveillance by use of point of care diagnostics (POCD)The development of simple, rapid, and portable diagnostic devices is considered a priority for animal diseases
The incidence of emerging infectious diseases has increased in the recent decades and threatens to increase in the near future (Dikid et al 2013)
The advantages of being rapid, affordable and the ability to diagnose an infectious disease on spot has driven an intense effort to refine and build on the existing technologies to generate advanced point of care diagnostics (POCD) with incremental improvements in analytical performance to diagnose a broad spectrum of animal diseases
Summary
The development of simple, rapid, and portable diagnostic devices is considered a priority for animal diseases. Detection of antigens can be done using portable immunochromatographic strips, known as antigen-lateral flow device (Ag-LFD), which works by binding both antigen and antibody-coated detector particles to bands of capturing monoclonal antibody (mAb) on various zones of a polymeric strip through capillary action (Howson et al 2017). The conjugated antibody bound to the target antigen migrates along the strip into the detection zone which is a porous membrane usually composed of nitrocellulose, where the antigen-conjugated antibody complex is trapped by the immobilized capture antibody in the test line forming a coloured reaction indicating the presence of the antigen of interest. The excess conjugated antibody will be captured at the control zone by secondary antibody which is indicative of proper flow of the sample through the strip (Sajid et al 2015; Koczula and Gallotta 2016). With the developments in reader technology and advancements in raw materials, such as labels, LFD can match the sensitivity of enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and might be a substitute to ELISA in sero-epidemiology of animal diseases in near future
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