The veterinary public health safety and management team of the Beijing Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has discovered new molecular markers such as LTA and IL-8 that can be used for the diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis, which is of great significance for the early diagnosis and prevention and control of bovine tuberculosis. The findings were published online in Frontiers in Veterinary Science.

  According to researcher Zhu Hongfei, bovine tuberculosis is a chronic consumptive zoonotic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium bovis infection, which can infect humans, dairy cows, a variety of domestic animals and wild animals. People can also be infected by drinking poorly pasteurised milk through the digestive tract or by inhaling contaminated air through the respiratory tract. At present, the prevention and control of bovine tuberculosis in the world is mainly based on the strategy of "detection-culling", and intradermal allergy test and IFN-γ release test are the OIE's bovine tuberculosis diagnosis methods, but neither of them can distinguish the infection period of tuberculosis cattle, and the culling of positive cattle will also cause corresponding economic losses. Therefore, it is of great significance for the prevention and control of bovine tuberculosis, the development of animal husbandry and public health safety in China to screen new and effective molecular targets, develop more effective diagnostic reagents for bovine tuberculosis, and accurately and timely detect and eliminate tuberculosis cattle, especially cattle with tuberculosis during the shedding period.