Abstract

  The Tuberculin skin test (TST) which for several years remained the only available tool for diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis (BTB) in live cattle lacks the desired sensitivity and specificity. In the past decade, the Interferon Gamma Release Assays (IGRAs) have become the preferred diagnostic tests for latent TB infection (LTBI) in humans and cattle. One of the IGRAs which is commercialized as BOVIGAMTM TB test specifically for cattle has been proven to have a higher specificity and sensitivity over the TST. BOVIGAMTM has been approved by the Office International des Epizooties (OIE) for screening of TB infection in cattle and may enable surveillance of animal health and welfare. We determined the prevalence of BTB infection in pre-slaughter cattle from three major abattoirs in Accra between May and July 2019 using the BOVIGAMTM 2G assay. Five (5 mls) blood samples (one tablespoonful) were drawn from the jugular vein of each cattle into heparin blood collection tubes for the BOVIGAMTM 2G ELISA assay which was performed according to manufacturer’s instructions. A total of 125 healthy looking cattle was screened out of which 10 (8%) were positive for BTB infection. This suggests that BOVIGAM test may provide a better indication of animal health with respect to BTB than physical examination and postmortem inspection for tuberculosis lesions.

Keywords: Bovine TB; Latent TB Infection; BOVIGAMTM 2G Test; IGRAs; Cattle; Abattoirs; Ghana

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Citation

Citation: Gloria Ivy Mensah., et al. “Detection of Bovine TB infection in Pre-slaughter Cattle at Selected Abattoirs in Accra, Ghana Using the BOVIGAMTM 2G Assay”.Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 2.8 (2020): 29-33.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Gloria Ivy Mensah., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.