Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Recombinant Leishmania (Leishmania) infantum Ecto-Nucleoside Triphosphate Diphosphohydrolase NTPDase-2 as a new antigen in canine visceral leishmaniasis diagnosis.
- Journal:
- Acta tropica
- Year:
- 2013
- Authors:
- de Souza, Ronny Francisco et al.
- Affiliation:
- Departamento de Bioquí · Brazil
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
Canine visceral leishmaniasis is a serious disease that can affect both dogs and humans, as dogs are often the main carriers of the Leishmania parasites. Researchers have developed a new test using a specific protein from the parasite, called rLic-NTPDase-2, to help diagnose this disease in dogs. They tested this new protein against samples from dogs known to have leishmaniasis, as well as those that did not have the disease or had a different infection. The results showed that the test was very accurate, correctly identifying all positive cases and not giving false positives. This new diagnostic tool could improve how we detect leishmaniasis in dogs and might even be useful for diagnosing the disease in humans.
Abstract
Canine visceral leishmaniasis is an important public health concern. In the epidemiological context of human visceral leishmaniasis, dogs are considered the main reservoir of Leishmania parasites; therefore, dogs must be epidemiologically monitored constantly in endemic areas. Furthermore, dog to human transmission has been correlated with emerging urbanization and increasing rates of leishmaniasis infection worldwide. Leishmania (Leishmania) infantum (L. chagasi) is the etiologic agent of visceral leishmaniasis in the New World. In this work, a new L. (L.) infantum (L. chagasi) recombinant antigen, named ATP diphosphohydrolase (rLic-NTPDase-2), intended for use in the immunodiagnosis of CVL was produced and validated. The extracellular domain of ATP diphosphohydrolase was cloned and expressed in the pET21b-Escherichia coli expression system. Indirect ELISA assays were used to detect the purified rLic-NTPDase-2 antigen using a standard canine sera library. This library contained CVL-positive samples, leishmaniasis-negative samples and samples from Trypanosoma cruzi-infected dogs. The results show a high sensitivity of 100% (95% CI=92.60-100.0%) and a high specificity of 100% (95% CI=86.77-100.0%), with a high degree of confidence (k=1). These findings demonstrate the potential use of this recombinant protein in immune diagnosis of canine leishmaniasis and open the possibility of its application to other diagnostic approaches, such as immunochromatography fast lateral flow assays and human leishmaniasis diagnosis.
Find similar cases for your pet
PetCaseFinder finds other peer-reviewed reports of pets with the same symptoms, plus a plain-English summary of what was tried across them.
Search related cases →Original publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23022017/