Preliminary Findings of Lipoprotein B in Detecting Cattle Chronically Infected with Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia

Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (CBPP) caused by Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. mycoides is an important disease of cattle affecting international trade. Complement Fixation Test (CFT) and competitive Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (c-ELISA) are the only serological tests recognized for diagnosis of CBPP. The performance of CFT depends on the quality of the antigen and the combination of reagents used and only detects CBPP during the acute phase of the disease. There is a need to develop a more sensitive and specific test. Therefore, one mycoplasma protein previously identified as being a potential diagnostic antigen, Lipoprotein B (LppB), was tested for its usefulness to detect infected cattle in an indirect ELISA (i-ELISA). Samples obtained from pre-challenged and challenged cattle were compared using CFT and an i-ELISA based on lipoprotein B. The i-ELISA developed with the new antigen, detected more positive samples than the CFT, which is considered a gold standard. Therefore, the LppB recombinant protein could be explored further as target for screening cattle infected chronically with CBPP.