Isolation and identification of M. tuberculosis from sheep tissue samples and sero-diagnosis study in an organized sheep farm.

Arunmozhivarman, K.; Radhika, R.; Kannan, P.; Maroudam, V.; Vijayalakshmi, K.; Claudet, P.V.; Raj, G.

International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences; 2018; 7 (1): 2740-2744.

Abstract: A 2 years old female Madras Red sheep with the medical history of reduction in feed intake, poor weight gain and emaciation was found dead in an organised farm. The sheep did not have any obvious respiratory symptoms. Edematous and caseous lesions were observed in mesenteric, bronchial, mediastinal and prescapular lymph nodes of the sheep during post mortem examination. Other internal organs were free of any specific lesions. The lymph node samples were decontaminated and cultured by inoculating into BACTEC Mycobacteria Growth Indicator Tube (MGIT) system and Lowenstein Jensen slants. The cultures turned positive and acid fast staining of the bacterial culture revealed the presence of Mycobacteria. The bacteria was further confirmed as Mycobacterium tuberculosis by multiplex PCR and nucleotide sequencing. A Tuberculosis sero-diagnostic study was conducted for all the animals in the farm using commercially available ELISA kit to know the incidence of tuberculosis in the farm. Three sheep out of the total 205 sheep were positive for tuberculosis by ELISA with the estimated 1.5% positivity. This shows the active circulation of tuberculosis in sheep farm and there may be possibility of human to animal transmission and vice versa. The role of sheep in the epidemiology and transmission of tuberculosis needs further study.

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