Towards the development of diagnostic assays to discriminate between Mycobacterium bovis infection and BCG vaccination in cattle. Clin. Infect. Dis

A scienti®c review of the recent sharp increase in bovine tuberculosis in Great Britain has concluded that the development of a cattle vaccine holds the best prospect for long-term disease control. It is important to develop a diagnostic test that differentiates between vac-cinated and Mycobacterium bovis±infected animals, to ensure that test-and-slaughter control strategies can continue alongside vaccination. The mycobacterial antigens ESAT-6, MPB64, and MPB83 are expressed at high levels in M. bovis but are expressed at low levels or not at all in bacille Calmette-GueÂrin (BCG) Pasteur. Promiscuous bovine T cell epitopes of these antigens were identi®ed and formulated into a peptide cocktail. This cocktail and a cocktail composed of recombinant forms of the 3 antigens was able to distinguish cattle infected with virulent M. bovis from those vaccinated with BCG and from those sensitized to avian tuber-culin in lymphocyte transformation and interferon-g assays. Bovine tuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium bovis. It is a zoonotic disease and was the cause of »6 % of total human deaths due to tuberculosis in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as 150 % of all cervical lymphadenitis cases involving children [1