Detection of Tritrichomonas foetus by RT-rtPCR in pooled bovine preputial washings

Abstract

Trichomonosis is a venereal disease of cattle caused by the protozoan Tritrichomonas foetus. T. foetus infection in cattle herds can be economically costly for cattle producers; therefore, testing is important for detection of the agent. Given that bulls are considered to be subclinical carriers of T. foetus, it is important to detect T. foetus infection prior to movement and/or breeding season. We have described previously the development of an updated set of PCR primers and probes that offer increased sensitivity of T. foetus detection in smegma samples collected in PBS by utilizing reverse-transcription real-time PCR (RT-rtPCR) that targets the 5.8S ribosomal RNA of the T. foetus organism. Here, we report improvements in the updated RT-rtPCR reagents as well as the evaluation of testing of pooled smegma samples. We found that up to 5 smegma samples can be pooled, similar to routine testing practices (InPouch culture), without reducing the sensitivity of detection of T. foetus.

Molecular prevalence and phylogenetic confirmation of bovine trichomoniasis in aborted cows in Iraq

“…Although highly specific and sensitive diagnostic tools have been developed, success is restricted in field conditions [3]. Recently, a single polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test has been used for the regular examination of herds in developed countries, such as Australia, China, and United States of America (USA), which has a sensitivity of 78%-96.7% compared with cultures, and accurately identifies infected populations [7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”