How Can We Keep Animals Healthy?

Outbreaks of bovine TB are familiar news headlines in some countries. The spread of this slow-progressing respiratory disease across multiple species is alarming and largely underappreciated by many uninvolved in animal husbandry. To provide even a degree of disease management, programs for screening and slaughter prior to overt clinical signs are considered necessary, but slaughter of livestock has tremendous financial consequences and culling of wild carriers, such as badgers and possums, has emotive opposition.

QIAGEN recently held its fourth international QIAGEN Vet Days event in our Leipzig office, attracting 50 delegates from 10 countries to discuss research application of QIAGEN kits, improving vet-specific sample preparation, and opportunities for process automation. Academic scientists highlighted the trial success of our artus M. tuberculosis PCR Kit and QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT) Kit — both kits for human tissue sample — in more rapid confirmation of bovine TB in slaughtered animals compared with traditional bacteria culture methods.

QIAGEN is investigating development of veterinary-optimized kits and workflows for bovine TB to better assist academic veterinary researchers. More rapid detection of bovine TB could allow better containment of potential disease outbreaks and possibly save healthy animals. Interestingly, the forerunner of the human QFT kit was first developed for easier screening of cattle, so this marks a return to optimize a veterinary product with cross-talk from our human diagnostic experience.

QIAGEN works with farmers, vets, and government disease-control agencies to develop rapid and reliable responses against catastrophic disease outbreaks, including bovine TB.