Tuberculosis (TB), a contagious disease mainly caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), Mycobacterium bovis (M.bovis), and Mycobacterium caprae (M.caprae), poses a major global threat to the health of humans and many species of animals.
Developing an ante-mortem detection technique for different species would be of significance in improving the surveillance employing a One Health strategy.To achieve this goal, a universal indirect ELISA was established for serologically detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex infection for multiple live hosts by using a fusion protein of MPB70, MPB83, ESAT6, and CFP10 common in M.tb, M.bovis, and M.
caprae as the coating antigen (MMEC) and HRP-labeled simply southern cat shirt fusion protein A and G as a secondary antibody.After testing the known positive and negative sera, the receiver operating characteristic curves were constructed to decide the cut-off values.Then, the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of MMEC/AG-iELISA were determined as 100.00% (95% CI: 96.
90%, 100.00%) and 100.00% (95% CI: 98.44%, 100.
00%) for M.bovis infection of cattle, 100.00% (95% CI: 95.00%, 100.
00%) and borstlist självhäftande 100.0% (95% CI: 96.80%, 100.00%) for M.
bovis infection of sheep, 90.74% (95% CI: 80.09%, 95.98%) and 98.
63% (95% CI: 95.14%, 99.76%) for M.bovis infection of cervids, 100.
00% (95% CI: 15.81%, 100.00%) and 98.81% (95% CI: 93.
54%, 99.97%) for M.bovis infection of monkeys, 100.00% (95% CI: 86.
82%, 100.00%) and 94.85% (95% CI: 91.22%, 97.
03%) for M.tb infection of humans.Furthermore, this MMEC/AG-iELISA likely detects M.caprae infection in roe deer.
Thus this method has a promising application in serological TB surveillance for multiple animal species thereby providing evidence for taking further action in TB control.