Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Development of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for serodiagnosis of ringworm infection in cattle.
- Journal:
- Clinical and vaccine immunology : CVI
- Year:
- 2013
- Authors:
- Bagut, Elena Tatiana et al.
- Affiliation:
- Department of Parasitology and Parasitic Diseases
Plain-English summary
This study focused on creating a new test to diagnose ringworm infection in cattle, which is caused by a type of fungus. Researchers developed a specific blood test using two proteins from the fungus that are very similar to those found in the type of ringworm that affects cattle. They tested blood samples from 135 cattle known to have ringworm and compared them to 55 healthy cattle without any signs of infection. The new test was able to accurately identify infected animals most of the time, showing high sensitivity and specificity, which means it was good at detecting the disease and not giving false positives. This test could be very useful for tracking ringworm infections in cattle and for studying vaccines against it.
Abstract
The aim of this study was to develop an in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for the serological diagnosis of ringworm infection in cattle. We used available recombinant forms of Trichophyton rubrum dipeptidyl peptidase V (TruDppV) and T. rubrum leucin aminopeptidase 2 (TruLap2), which are 98% identical to Trichophyton verrucosum orthologues. Field serum samples from 135 cattle with ringworm infection, as confirmed by direct microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, and PCR, and from 55 cattle without any apparent skin lesions or history of ringworm infection that served as negative controls were used. Sensitivities, specificities, and positive and negative predictive values were determined to evaluate the diagnostic value of our ELISA. Overall, the ELISAs based on recombinant TruDppV and TruLap2 discriminated well between infected animals and healthy controls. Highly significant differences (P < 0.0001, Mann-Whitney U test) were noted between optical density values obtained when sera from infected versus control cattle were tested. The ELISA developed for the detection of specific antibodies against DppV gave 89.6% sensitivity, 92.7% specificity, a 96.8% positive predictive value, and a 78.4% negative predictive value. The recombinant TruLap2-based ELISA displayed 88.1% sensitivity, 90.9% specificity, a 95.9% positive predictive value, and a 75.7% negative predictive value. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ELISA based on recombinant antigens for assessing immune responses to ringworm infection in cattle; it is particularly suitable for epidemiological studies and also for the evaluation of vaccines and/or vaccination procedures.
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Search related cases →Original publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23740921/