Mycobacterium tuberculosis extracellular vesicle-associated lipoprotein LpqH as a potential biomarker to distinguish paratuberculosis infection or vaccination from tuberculosis infection

BACKGROUND: Both bovine tuberculosis (TB) and paratuberculosis (PTB) are serious and widespread bacterial infections affecting many domestic and wild animal species. However, current vaccines do not confer complete protection and cause interference with other diagnostics tests, including bovine TB. Therefore, the development of “Differentiating Infected from Vaccinated Animals” (DIVA) tests are a pressing need. In this study, we have tested the feasibility of mycobacterial extracellular vesicles (EVs) as potential source of biomarkers to discriminate between Mycobacterium bovis infected, Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) infected and MAP-vaccinated cows. We have, initially, characterized vesicle production in the two most medically relevant species of mycobacteria for livestock, MAP and M. bovis, for being responsible for tuberculosis (TB) and paratuberculosis (PTB). RESULTS: Our results indicate that these two species produce EVs with different kinetics, morphology and size distribution. Analysis of the immunogenicity of both type of EVs showed some cross reactivity with sera from PTB+ and TB+ cows, suggesting a limited diagnostic capacity for both EVs. Conversely, we noticed that Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) EVs showed some differential reactivity between sera from MAP-vaccinated or PTB+ cows from TB+ ones. Mass spectrometry analysis (MS) identified a 19-kDa EV-associated lipoprotein as the main source of the differential reactivity. CONCLUSIONS: LpqH could be a good plasma biomarker with capacity to distinguish PTB+ or MAP-vaccinated cows from cows infected with TB. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12917-019-1941-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.