Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Assessment of a protein cocktail-based skin test for bovine tuberculosis in a double-blind field test in cattle.
- Journal:
- Clinical and vaccine immunology : CVI
- Year:
- 2013
- Authors:
- Xin, Ting et al.
- Affiliation:
- Institute of Animal Sciences · China
Plain-English summary
Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a serious disease in cattle caused by a specific bacteria. The usual test for this disease, called the tuberculin skin test, can be inconsistent and sometimes gives confusing results because it can react to other non-harmful bacteria as well. Researchers have developed new skin tests using specific proteins from the bacteria that cause bTB, and they tested these on cattle to see how well they work. The results showed that one of the new tests, which combines certain proteins, is very effective at identifying cattle with bTB and works well compared to traditional testing methods. Overall, this new protein-based skin test appears to be a reliable option for diagnosing bovine tuberculosis in cattle.
Abstract
Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a worldwide zoonosis caused mainly by Mycobacterium bovis. The traditional diagnostic method used often is the tuberculin skin test, which uses bovine purified protein derivatives (PPD-B). However, it is difficult to maintain uniformity of PPD-B from batch to batch, and it shares common antigens with nonpathogenic environmental mycobacteria. To overcome these problems, M. bovis-specific antigens that showed good T cell stimulation, such as CFP-10, ESAT-6, Rv3615c, etc., have been used in the skin test, but there have been no large-scale clinical studies on these antigens. In this study, two combinations (CFP-10/ESAT-6/TB10.4 protein cocktail and CFP-10/ESAT-6/Rv3872/MPT63 protein cocktail) were developed and used as stimuli in the skin test. Cattle were double-blind tested to assess the efficiency of the protein cocktail-based skin tests. The results showed that the CFP-10/ESAT-6/TB10.4 protein cocktail-based skin test can differentiate TB-infected cattle from Mycobacterium avium-infected ones and that it shows a high degree of agreement with the traditional tuberculin skin test (κ = 0.8536) and gamma interferon (IFN-γ) release assay (κ = 0.8154). Compared to the tuberculin skin test, the relative sensitivity and relative specificity of the CFP-10/ESAT-6/TB10.4-based skin test were 87% and 97%, respectively., The relative sensitivity and relative specificity of the CFP-10/ESAT-6/TB10.4-based skin test were 93% and 92%, respectively, on comparison with the IFN-γ release assay. The correlation between the increases in skin thickness observed after the inoculation of stimuli was high (PPD-B versus CFP-10/ESAT-6/TB10.4, Spearman r of 0.8435). The correlation between the optical density at 450 nm (OD450) obtained after blood stimulation with PPD-B and the increase in skin thickness observed after inoculation of the CFP-10/ESAT-6/TB10.4 protein cocktail was high (Spearman r = 0.7335). Therefore, the CFP-10/ESAT-6/TB10.4-based skin test responses correlate to traditional measures of bovine TB evaluation, including skin test and gamma interferon release assay.
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Search related cases →Original publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23365203/