Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Measuring anti-Leishmania antibodies in dog saliva for diagnosis
By Cantos-Barreda, Ana et al.·Published in Veterinary parasitology·2017·University of Murcia, Spain·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Quantification of anti-Leishmania antibodies in saliva of dogs.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A study found that measuring specific antibodies in the saliva of dogs could help diagnose Canine Leishmaniosis (CanL), a disease caused by a parasite. Researchers developed a new test that was able to accurately detect higher levels of anti-Leishmania IgG2 antibodies in the saliva of infected dogs compared to healthy ones. This method is less invasive than drawing blood, making it easier for both dogs and their owners. The saliva test showed promise for identifying dogs with the disease, while another type of antibody (IgA) did not provide useful information.
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Abstract
Detection of serum anti-Leishmania antibodies by quantitative or qualitative techniques has been the most used method to diagnose Canine Leishmaniosis (CanL). Nevertheless, saliva may represent an alternative to blood because it is easy to collect, painless and non-invasive in comparison with serum. In this study, two time-resolved immunofluorometric assays (TR-IFMAs) for quantification of anti-Leishmania IgG2 and IgA antibodies in saliva were developed and validated and their ability to distinguish Leishmania-seronegative from seropositive dogs was evaluated. The analytical study was performed by evaluation of assay precision, sensitivity and accuracy. In addition, serum from 48 dogs (21 Leishmania-seropositive and 27 Leishmania-seronegative) were analyzed by TR-IFMAs. The assays were precise, with an intra- and inter-assay coefficients of variation lower than 11%, and showed high level of accuracy, as determined by linearity under dilution (R=0.99) and recovery tests (>88.60%). Anti-Leishmania IgG2 antibodies in saliva were significantly higher in the seropositive group compared with the seronegative (p<0.0001), whereas no significant differences for anti-Leishmania IgA antibodies between both groups were observed. Furthermore, TR-IFMA for quantification of anti-Leishmania IgG2 antibodies in saliva showed higher differences between seropositive and seronegative dogs than the commercial assay used in serum. In conclusion, TR-IFMAs developed may be used to quantify anti-Leishmania IgG2 and IgA antibodies in canine saliva with an adequate precision, analytical sensitivity and accuracy. Quantification of anti-Leishmania IgG2 antibodies in saliva could be potentially used to evaluate the humoral response in CanL. However, IgA in saliva seemed not to have diagnostic value for this disease. For future studies, it would be desirable to evaluate the ability of the IgG2 assay to detect dogs with subclinical disease or with low antibody titers in serum and also to study the antibodies behaviour in saliva during the treatment of CanL.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28606325/