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Point of Care Tuberculosis Sero-Diagnosis Kit for Wild Animals: Combination of Proteins for Improving the Diagnostic Sensitivity and Specificity

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Abstract

Tuberculosis is a significant problem globally for domestic animals as well as captive and free ranging wild life. Rapid point of care (POC) serology kits are well suited for the diagnosis of TB in wild animals. However, wild animals are invariably exposed to environmental non-pathogenic mycobacterium species with the development of cross reacting antibodies. In the present study, POC TB diagnosis kit was developed using a combination of pathogenic Mycobacteria specific recombinant antigens and purified protein derivatives of pathogenic and non-pathogenic Mycobacteria. To benchmark the TB antibody detection kit, particularly in respect to specificity which could not be determined in wildlife due to the lack of samples from confirmed uninfected animals, we first tested well-characterized sera from 100 M. bovis infected and 100 uninfected cattle. Then we investigated the kit’s performance using sera samples from wildlife, namely Sloth Bears (n = 74), Elephants (n = 9), Cervidae (n = 14), Felidae (n = 21), Cape buffalo (n = 2), Wild bear (n = 1) and Wild dog (n = 1).In cattle, a sensitivity of 81% and a specificity of 90% were obtained. The diagnostic sensitivity of the kit was 94% when the kit was tested using known TB positive sloth bear sera samples. 47.4% of the in-contact sloth bears turned seropositive using the rapid POC TB diagnostic kit. Seropositivity in other wild animals was 25% when the sera samples were tested using the kit. A point of care TB sero-diagnostic kit with the combination of proteins was developed and the kit was validated using the sera samples of wild animals.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Karnataka Forests Department and Wildlife SOS for helping us with Sloth Bear sera samples. TRPVB acknowledges the DBT-BBSRC FADH funding scheme code:BT/IN/indo-uk/FADH/52/VM/2013 project titled “Development of recombinant BGG vaccine and complimentary diagnosis for TB control in cattle”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Translational Research Platform for Veterinary Biologicals (A DBT-TANUVAS Partnership Programme), Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chennai, 600051, India

    Maroudam Veerasami, K. Venkataraman, Chitra Karuppannan, K. Arunmozhivarman, Gopal Dhinakar Raj & B. Mohana Subramanian

  2. Wildlife SOS, an Indian Registered Non-Governmental Organization, New Delhi, India

    Arun Attur Shanmugam

  3. Genomix Molecular Diagnostics (P) Ltd, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, AP, India

    Mallepaddi Chand Prudhvi & Polavarapu Rathnagiri

  4. Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), Addlestone, New Haw, Surrey, UK

    Thomas Holder & Martin Vordermeier

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  1. Maroudam Veerasami
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  2. K. Venkataraman
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Veerasami, M., Venkataraman, K., Karuppannan, C. et al. Point of Care Tuberculosis Sero-Diagnosis Kit for Wild Animals: Combination of Proteins for Improving the Diagnostic Sensitivity and Specificity. Indian J Microbiol 58, 81–92 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12088-017-0688-7

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