Potential for rapid antibody detection to identify tuberculous cattle with non-reactive tuberculin skin test results

BACKGROUND: Bovine tuberculosis (TB) control programs generally rely on the tuberculin skin test (TST) for ante-mortem detection of Mycobacterium bovis-infected cattle. RESULTS: Present findings demonstrate that a rapid antibody test based on Dual-Path Platform (DPP(®)) technology, when applied 1-3 weeks after TST, detected 9 of 11 and 34 of 52 TST non-reactive yet M. bovis-infected cattle from the US and GB, respectively. The specificity of the assay ranged from 98.9% (n = 92, US) to 96.0% (n = 50, GB) with samples from TB-free herds. Multi-antigen print immunoassay (MAPIA) revealed the presence of antibodies to multiple antigens of M. bovis in sera from TST non-reactors diagnosed with TB. CONCLUSIONS: Thus, use of serologic assays in series with TST can identify a significant number of TST non-reactive tuberculous cattle for more efficient removal from TB-affected herds.