An Ibero-American inter-laboratory trial to evaluate serological tests for the detection of anti-Neospora caninum antibodies in cattle

CAMPERO, LUCÍA M.; MORENO-GONZALO, JAVIER; VENTURINI, MARÍA C.; MORÉ, GASTÓN; DELLARUPE, ANDREA; RAMBEAUD, MAGDALENA; ECHAIDE, IGNACIO E.; VALENTINI, BEATRIZ; CAMPERO, CARLOS M.; MOORE, DADÍN P.; CANO, DORA B.; FORT, MARCELO; MOTA, RINALDO A.; SERRANO-MARTÍNEZ, MARCOS E.; CRUZ-VÁZQUEZ, CARLOS; ORTEGA-MORA, LUIS M.; ÁLVAREZ-GARCÍA, GEMA

TROPICAL ANIMAL HEALTH AND PRODUCTION

SPRINGER

Año: 2018 vol. 50 p. 75 - 84

0049-4747

We carried out an inter-laboratory trial to compare the serological tests commonly used for the detection of specific Neospora caninum antibodies in cattle in Ibero-American countries. A total of eight laboratories participated from the following countries: Argentina (n = 4), Brazil (n = 1), Peru (n = 1), Mexico (n = 1), and Spain (n = 1). A blind panel of well-characterized cattle sera (n = 143) and sera representative of the target population (n = 351) was tested by seven in-house indirect fluorescent antibody tests (IFATs 1?7) and three enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs 1?3; two in-house and one commercial). Diagnostic performance of the serological tests was calculated and compared according to the following criteria: (1) the ?Pre-test information,? which uses previous epidemiological and serological data; (2) the ?Majority of tests,? which classifies a serum as positive or negative according to the results obtained by most tests evaluated. Unexpectedly, six tests showed either sensitivity (Se) or specificity (Sp) values lower than 90%. In contrast, the best tests in terms of Se, Sp, and area under the ROC curve (AUC) values were IFAT 1 and optimized ELISA 1 and ELISA 2. We evaluated a high number of IFATs, which are the most widely used tests in Ibero-America. The significant discordances observed among the tests regardless of the criteria employed hinder control programs and urge the use of a common test or with similar performances to either the optimized IFAT 1 and ELISAs 1 and 2.