Volume: 55 Issue: 2
Year: 2024, Page: 465-470, Doi: https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2024.55.2.465-470
Received: Dec. 19, 2023 Accepted: March 30, 2024 Published: June 30, 2024
Banked serum samples of 60 dead captive Asian elephants were used to evaluate a dot ELISA for tuberculosis screening, of which 30 each were taken as cases and controls. The 30 samples that were recorded as positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis by culture and PCR besides being positive on the DPP® Vet-TB Elephant Assay (DPP) and based on lesions during post-mortem examinations were utlised as known positive controls for this study. The 30 controls were tested negative on DPP and were from elephants that had not shown post-mortem lesions. The dot ELISA was designed on a nitrocellulose membrane template, using Protein A- Horseradish peroxidase as the conjugate and diaminobenzidine tetrahydrochloride as the chromogen substrate. Standardisation of the assay was done using a purified M. tuberculosis antigen, ESAT6-CFP10. Pooled sera samples from live elephants tested recently on the DPP were taken as positive and negative controls. Test results of the dot ELISA were evaluated by comparing the results with the disease status of the cases and controls based on the ante-mortem DPP results and post-mortem lesions. Diagnostic sensitivity (66.67%), specificity (93.33%), positive (90.91%) and negative (73.68%) predictive values were then estimated for the dot ELISA.
Keywords: Tuberculosis, elephant, dot ELISA, ESAT6-CFP10
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© 2024 Abraham et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abraham, D., Ravishankar, C., Deepa, P.M., Sumod, K., Bipin, K.C, Rajani, C.V. and Vijayakumar K. 2024. Evaluation of a Dot ELISA for tuberculosis screening in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). J. Vet. Anim. Sci. 55(2):465-470
DOI: https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2024.55.2.465-470