Webinar "Serological diagnosis of CBPP: background, interpretation and troubleshooting"

Serological diagnosis of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia: background, interpretation and troubleshooting | 28 October 2022 | 10.30-12.00 CET

Welcome! You are invited to join the “Serological diagnosis of CBPP: background, interpretation and troubleshooting” webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

At this webinar, the Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária (INIAV), the FAO/WOAH Reference Centre for CBPP, will present an overview of the disease focusing on its serological diagnosis, namely CFT, including its interpretation & troubleshooting.

Today, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP) can only be found in sub-Saharan Africa. However, during the past centuries it caused significant losses in many other regions. Due to high morbidity and mortality rates, CBPP causes economic losses and is listed as a notifiable disease by the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). This respiratory disease is highly contagious and when introduced into a cattle herd, spreads quickly by aerosols. Infected cattle show clinical signs and gross pathological observations may help diagnosis. Nevertheless, the isolation and identification of the etiological agent – Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. Mycoides – is required for a definitive diagnosis. For screenings of the disease in a herd during eradication programmes and for cattle movement, the complement fixation test (CFT) is recommended serological test in the WOAH Manual of Diagnostic Tests and Vaccines for Terrestrial Animals.

Other immunological tests e.g. enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay may be applied, but CFT can detect nearly all sick animals with acute lesions in a herd and, depending on the stage and the evolution of the disease, also those in the early stages or with chronic lesions. CFT is, therefore, a very useful tool to understand the extent of the infection in a herd or to confirm the disease-free status of a region. Good laboratory practices, execution and interpretation of results are essential to take advantage of the potentialities of this technique.

Register here.