Detection of lipoarabinomannan by coagglutination test for diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis

The detection of polysaccharides has been shown to be a useful test for the diagnosis of some bacterial infections including those caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae and Neiserria meningitidis. It has been shown that patients with these infections have antigenemia and it has been possible to detect it by using various agglutination tests. The presence of circulating antigen in sera from TB patients has been demonstrated earlier by Krambovitz et al., (1986) who found antigenemia in 75% of the sera samples from patients with TB by using an ELISA for detection of mycobacterial antigens. Lipoarabinomannan (LAM) - polysaccharide antigen found in the cell wall of mycobacteria is secreted out of multiplication site and it is present in the sera of patients with TB. Most of the infected individuals produce antibodies against LAM and that the detection of antigenemia could be useful for diagnosis of TB (Sada et al., 1992). Hence, the present study was aimed to develop a coagglutination test to detect LAM antigenemia to diagnose bovine tuberculosis.