CURRENT APPROACHES TO DIAGNOSIS OF PARATUBERCULOSIS IN CATTLE

Abstract

Diagnostics of paratuberculosis aims at two goals: first, monitoring the herd, and second, reliable identification of positive animals. Bovine paratuberculosis is diagnosed by the application of direct methods, i.e. by identification of the agent, or indirectly by measuring immunology response. The relevance of a diagnostic method is determined by the stage of the disease in animal. Direct identification of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis in a feces sample is limited by the fact of small number of secreted bacteria by intermitent secretion. Bacteriological examination of feces is a valuable diagnostic procedure for detection of animals with clinical symptoms and the animals with subclinical manifestation. Direct identification of MAP in feces and organ samples using PCR method considerably shortens the time for proving the evidence of a disease. The indirect methods for proving the prevalence are complicated and limited. ELISA assay is considered the method of choice for diagnosis of paratuberculosis due to its rapidity and relatively low costs. Despite continual and numerous research, the problem of detecting subclinical infection has not been solved yet especially in the herds with low prevalence of positive animals. Numerous efforts of researches have been done in order to improve the current methods and develop new diagnostic procedures for diagnosis of paratuberculosis. However, already now the control of the disease is possible due to the combination of regular diagnostic through sanitary measures and identification of the infected animals.

Keywords

• cattle
• paratuberculosis
• diagnostic
• control measures