Comparative Evaluation of Methods for the Diagnosis of Bovine Tritrichomonas foetus Infection

Abstract

Tritrichomonas foetus is the causative agent of bovine tritrichomonosis, a primarily sexually transmitted disease leading to infertility and abortion in cattle. To date, detection of bovine T foetus infection in routine diagnostics is performed by parasitological methods involving microscopial examination of samples directly or after in vitro cultivation in a suitable culture medium like Diamond’s medium or the commercially available InPouch^TMTF test. These methods may be hampered by contamination of the samples with intestinal or coprophilic microorganisms, furthermore they exhibit limited technical sensitivity. Recently, two different molecular diagnostic tests based upon the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) have been developped. In the present study, the performance characteristics of these two tests were determined using diagnostic and clinical samples, and were comparatively assessed with in vitro cultivation methods. The high suitability of a PCR test based upon ribosomal RNA gene unit sequences for routine diagnostic application was thus confirmed.