“Liodetect ® Animal Tb” Rapid Test As a Serological Ancillary Test to Tuberculin Skin Test Can Significantly Improve Overall Sensitivity with High Specificity for the Routine Screening of Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle Herds

Lateral flow technology is an easy and cheap serological tool for the screening of animal Tuberculosis, exploitable as Point Of Care test. The LIOdetect®Animal TB is a rapid test for the diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis, containing recombinant MPB83 and MPB70 of Mycobacterium bovis and a highly purified cell wall antigen. The rapid assay was tested on sera from 114 healthy cattles and 74 animals from herd with confirmed M. bovis tuberculosis . Serum with antibodies to one or all of the antigens will show one or more pink-purple bands in the test zone of the test card within 15 minutes. All the TB-free animals showed negative results (100% of specificity); for infected animals, when reactions to either of the 3 bands were taken into account, the test displays a variable sensitivity reaching upto to 95.8%. Considering the skin test negative infected animals, the LIOdetect®Animal TB rapid test could be an ancillary tool to detect false negative subjects emerged with the tuberculin skin test.