Good evening everybody, very pleased to see you at our next live webinar which is with Professor Irene Grant, who's professor in microbiology and food safety at Queen's University Belfast. Irene's gonna be talking about a novel, rapid, aged based. PCR test for viable mycobacteria and avian subspecies para tuberculosis, and looking at the development, performance, and future prospects for this, PCR test.
Professor Grant is a professor of microbiology and food safety at Queen's University. She's been studying mycobacterium, avian para tuberculosis for the last 25 years, obviously the, the cause of agent for Yoni's disease. And spent some of that time looking at how to effectively pasteurise dairy products to prevent the spread of the disease, but in recent times there's also been looking at improved methods of detection of the viable Mycobacterium in the veterinary specimens, and that's what we're going to be hearing about today, so over to you, Irene.
Thank you, Anthony, and hello, everyone. You've heard the title of my, presentation this evening. I hope you will find it an interest.
I will be referring to map as opposed to Mycobacterium avian subspecies prior tuberculosis. So I'm really, wanting to, tell you about this new test that we've developed at Queen's University. But just to give you a road map about where we're going in the course of the presentation, I will start with a brief introduction on map, obviously the causative agent of Yoni's disease, but it's also potentially linked to human disease, so.
I will mention that. I will discuss the current Joni's disease diagnostic tests and the limitations and then move on to describe the development and optimisation of this new age-based test for viable map and milk. I then have some data to share with you on the first application of the new test, and that was, to do with milk testing on farm.
. I will describe, briefly describe all applications for testing faeces and blood. I have some data to share on the performance of my new test versus the current Yoni's diagnostics, and then I'll just briefly, mention or describe the future prospects of the new test for Yoni's disease diagnosis. So, MAP is the cause of deviation of Yonni's disease, that's fact.
Yonni's disease, as many of you will know, is a contagious, chronic and usually fatal infection of ruminant livestock, principally affecting the small intestine of cattle, sheep and goats. The disease is endemic in many countries of the world and particularly so in dairy herds, . Calves usually become infected by feeding from their mothers or becoming consuming faeces in the course of feeding, and they would usually get infected within the first few days of life, but the actual disease symptoms don't manifest until maybe 2 to 7 years later.
The main clinical signs of Y's disease include weight loss and diarrhoea, but the animal maintains a normal appetite, so it's a really a failure to thrive, and some of the photos you can see on the right here show an emaciated cow, but otherwise the animal is feeding very well. A sure sign of clinical Yi's disease is this very liquid diarrhoea. However, in sheep and goats, the clinical signs are much harder to spot because the diarrhoea is not so significant.
But, Yish disease can have severe economic impacts on infected herds and, and the estimates, . Of losses per cow vary depending on a number of factors which I won't go into just at the present time. But it does have maybe not as severe economic impacts as some other cattle diseases like bovine TB around the world, but certainly it is still a loss for the farmer in terms of maybe culling animals early, reduced milk production, that kind of thing.
But the other thing about map is that it may have human health significance and really this is the how I became involved in map all those years ago. The hypothesis is long running, that map may be implicated in chronic diseases in humans. Principally, Crohn's disease has been the main associated disease, but also other autoimmune conditions, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes mellitus, etc.
Etc. So the thinking is that animals with Yoni's disease obviously shared the organism in their faeces and in their milk. So by both roots, may be present in raw milk.
Raw milk is obviously pasteurised generally before we would consume it, but research has shown that pasteurisation of milk may not be completely effective in killing all mat presents, so some viable map remain in processed milk and that can then be drunk by humans. So exposing them maybe repeatedly to small low levels of viable map via milk and potentially other dairy products. Now, I have to say that in the 2025 years that I've been involved with MAP, the hypothesis of the connection with human disease hasn't necessarily strengthened a whole lot.
But it's still lurking there in the background and hence, although it's an animal disease principally, and it would be controlled for economic reasons, there's always this lurking possibility of human health significance in the background. Yoni's disease occurs worldwide, and particularly in dairy herds, as I said, so this is a map of the world showing the latest or the most up to-date situation in terms of Yoni's disease in dairy cows. So the red countries, so you can see North America, and much of Europe, and New Zealand, and Chile and South America would be very high prevalent countries.
Many countries in the world, there's no prevalence figures, so that's the grey, but the green countries would be less than 1% prevalence, and some of the Scandinavian countries would be in that situation. But generally in the developed world, the only disease is an important animal disease of livestock. But the problem with Yoni's disease is that it's a hidden problem for farmers because for the one animal that the farmer may see showing signs, clinical signs, in other words, the diarrhoea and the weight loss, there may be.
Quite a substantial number of other animals within his herd that are also infected with map, but just in the subclinical stage. So there have been 4 stages of Yonni's disease described, as you can see in the table here, and sometimes it's referred to as the iceberg effect because really when an animal is in advanced clinical disease stage. There are multiple other animals in the herd at the stage 1 to 3.
So it's a hidden problem. Only whenever a farmer sees a clinical case will he know for certain that he has a yoni's problem and it's bigger than the one animal might suggest. So in terms of diagnosis of Yoni's disease, there are two types of diagnostic tests used to either detect antibodies against map or to detect the map organism itself.
So these are antibody tests or antigen tests as they're called. So, the most commonly used test would be the serum Eliza, so a blood test to screen for map antibodies, and this provides evidence of past map exposure, but not necessarily active infection. And as an animal progresses to the later stages of the disease, the sensitivity of this test gets much better, but it will miss a lot of animals in the earlier stages of the disease.
Similarly, you can apply an Elyzer test to screen for antibodies in milk. So this would either be bulk type milk or milk from individual animals. Once again, the sensitivity is not great and actually the milk Eliza is less sensitive than the blood elizer.
And once again, particularly in her with low levels of infection, you would get a lot of false negative results potentially. In terms of antigen tests, really the gold standard diagnostic test for yonis is a faecal culture, so demonstrating the presence of the live microorganism in faeces is viewed as the definitive test, but it's a problematic test because it takes a very long time to yield results. Culture of map, because the organism is so slow growing, takes weeks.
8 weeks minimum, probably longer, and you also then at the end of culture need a PCR, a map specific PCR to confirm isolates or suspect positive cultures. So it's quite a convoluted and lengthy process, faecal culture. So latterly, the faecal QPCR test has started to be adopted because this obviously represents a more rapid way to detect map in faeces than culture.
It has the downside of detecting DNA from both dead and living cells, . So it might give a higher result than if it was just detecting viable cells like culture does. The other thing that has been all point that has been raised about faecal QPCR is that it may be too sensitive and it may actually be detecting pass through of map in the animal's gut rather than truly shedding animal truly shedding by a truly infected animal.
So on this point, I want to throw in a little poll question, and if you could respond as quickly as possible. And if Sophie would put up the first poll question, so the question is, of the four existing Yi's disease diagnostic tests that I've just described, which would you trust most for decision making purposes at farm level? So Irene, I'll help with that as people start voting.
I will tell you, you know, the final results, so you've got an idea of that. Obviously, . If you're not sure, if you're not in the field, then that's fine.
But if, if you are doing it, then let's get a few people voting so we can get a an idea of what people are, are thinking. So just give you another. 5 seconds just to make up your mind.
So we have at the moment, 63% saying serum Eliza. 25% saying bulk milk alizer, and then there's 13% saying faecal PCR and nobody says faecal culture. Yeah.
I think that was largely what I was expecting serum Eliza is very much relied upon despite its lack of sensitivity, and faecal culture simply because results take so long, has kind of gone out of fashion, shall we say, or not used as much and faecal QPCR is obviously replacing it, so. Interesting to see that milk about milk Eliza is quite, quite high or on par with faecal QPCR there too. So thank you for your participation in the pool.
We, we shall move on. So generally the specificity of these currently used tests for map is very good. That means it's they're only detecting map generally, but they lack sensitivity and that's the ability to detect all infected animals in a herd.
Sometimes, the only infection timeline is represented, as this. Or as this. So in the top timeline you can see infection happens very early on in the young animal.
It then develops an immune response over time. It will start to shed the organism in its faeces at some point, and then it may go on to develop or progress into clinical disease. So at all points after the initial infection event, the animal would be infected, but antibodies will only start to appear sometime later and then the organism itself would only appear sometime later again.
So it's only when the map is being shared in faeces that an animal would be infectious to its herd mates. And, as the animal progresses through to the later stages of disease, then the diagnostic tests become more reliable. And similarly in the little image at the bottom here, the detection limit of the current tests is indicated by the blue solid line.
The darker grey is detection of or shedding of bacteria, map bacteria by an affected animal, and the lighter grey is an animal demonstrating the presence of antibodies. So you can see if this is if this is the detection limit of the current tests. It really only is at this stage here where both a blood Elyzer and a faecal PCR test both test positive.
Before that, you might get the odd positive test with a faecal. Test, but you won't get a positive detection with an antibody test. So that's the problem.
The existing diagnostic tests really only work whenever an animal is at an advanced stage of the disease. And at that point, it's probably too late because you've got bacteria in the faeces. The animals have been infectious for some time and it's probably transmitted the infection to other animals.
So this is the same situation, . Illustrate it in a different manner. So this is a Venn diagram.
The blue circle is all the animals in a herd. The pink circle is all the infected animals in that herd. The yellow circle is detection of map shedders by faecal PCR, and the grey circle is detect animals detected by a positive LISA test.
And you can see that even the combined of the yellow and the grey do not make up all the infected animals in the herd. And the animals with clinical disease, the ones that are definitely showing, you know, diarrhoea, weight loss, etc. Are a very small minority of all of the infected animals in the herd, as I illustrated earlier.
So what are the consequences of not detecting all infected animals in a herd? Well, you get continued spread of map infection on farm and you potentially share your infected animals with other farmers if you sell animals and don't operate a closed herd. There are economic losses which increase as time goes on, and as the situation with regard to Yoni and the herd decreases.
And you get reduced milk production obviously which leads to losses and there may be early culling. And if you're trying to control your disease and your herd, really your efforts are for naught because really you're a detection of detecting a fraction of the animals that you really need to get rid of. And obviously if you've got a map sharing animals in your herd, there could be viable map in your bulk tank milk, and this is potentially a food safety issue.
So really and truly what we need are better diagnostic tests for map. More sensitive, quicker, giving quantitative data that maybe you could rank animals in terms of, you know, the ones that we dealt with first and the others managed or whatever, but we need better urinate disease diagnostic methods. So this is where I start to describe then my new assay.
It's termed the egomagnetic separation QPCR assay. I will describe the different what romagnetic separation is in a moment, but really, we developed and optimised this assay in the course of a two-year project which finished spring of last year. The project was funded by Invest Northern Ireland through the Ire Food Quest Competence centre at Queen's and it was in collaboration with three industry partners.
Agrisearch BX Food diagnostics and Dearm. So it's a 2 year project. We spent the first year largely developing the test, and then on the second year we applied it in the field, essentially for milk testing principally.
So, what we wanted to do in the course of this two year project was streamline an existing phase-based assay that we have been using for some years in the lab. This assay was too slow in that it took 48 72 hours to yield a result, but it was also too complex a test for potential end users. There were many steps, there were many reagent requirements.
There was a couple of incubations and all in all, just it was too much to control for another end user whilst it was working very well in our hands at Queen's, it really wasn't transferable to other labs very easily. So what we wanted to do was translate the essay into a one-day test and to do that, we used the phases in a different manner. We attached the phases to magnetic beads.
Which we add to the sample, so it could be a milk sample or it could be a faeces suspension. We add the age coated beads to the sample, we mix them for 30 minutes, then we use a magnet to pull the beads plus any map cells attached out of the sample. There's a few washes and then we simply incubate that sample for 4 hours.
Allow the age to do their work, and after about 3.5 hours, the age burst the map cells release DNA, host DNA and progeny age, and we can harvest that host DNA and proceed to a map specific QPCR assay. So all in all, there are few manipulations, there are a few additions.
The test is easy to apply and it has turned out to be sensitive and specific for map. It's a one day test and that can be from start to finish about 7 to 8 hours, and it yields quantitative map results, which is also a benefit rather than just a present or absence result. So I mentioned this aggomagnetic separation.
Well, that's the basis of our new one day test. These D29 mycobacteriophages, which you can see here, cartoon fashion or here in the EM photographs. They don't just capture the map cells.
Once they capture them, they infect the map cells and start the process of age amplification. So that just means they take over the map host cells metabolic machinery, and they start to reproduce themselves, and after a time. The phages will form into new phages, new progeny phage, and they'll release enzymes, and they will weaken the cell wall of map and burst the cell and allow the DNA to be released.
So that host DNA is QPCR ready. We don't need a further DNA extraction or purification. We can simply proceed to a QPCR.
So you can see the bead with the ages taillight. Here, in this photograph and you can see the ages with the. Capturing a map cell.
This is a map cell here. So we demonstrated we could effectively coat the beads, we demonstrated that we could capture. A map with the coated beads and then we optimise the conditions of the assay.
So the key innovations involved in our assay are that we use these magnetic beads covered in lytic mycobacteriophages, and we use them as a natural DNA extraction method to provide this QPCR ready DNA. Those are the two main points. Normally to get DNA out of a map cell, you need either chemical or physical, means, treatments.
Because the cell wall of map is so strong, but by using the age, we have a very natural method of getting the DNA, and we don't have the expense of all the other be beating or chemical DNA extraction kits or what have you. So we get to the DNA simply and quickly. Now, our test is a test for viable map cells.
The age needs the map cell, the host cell, to be viable, to be able to proliferate itself, and if the cell is not viable, you won't get the burst and hence you won't get the DNA released. So illustrated here is the same experiment, one done on viable map cells and the other done on radiation killed map cells, so they, they're dead. And what we did was we, Captured the cells by varo magnetic separation and then we followed and measured the amount of DNA coming out of the cells after 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours and 4 hours.
And what you can see here is after about 3 hours, which is round about the first time of map cells, you get the strongest PCR bands and hence the highest amount of DNA. Now compare that with the same cells. Radiation killed, and after 4 hours, we're still seeing no signs at all of any PCR bands.
And we, we incorporated a very quick brief heat shock in our method just to get the DNA, the maximal DNA out sooner. But once again, even that mild heat treatment does not release any or cause any burst of map cells or release any DNA. So we have a test for viable map only.
So I'm going to move on now to discuss the potential application of our new essay for milk testing. We're particularly interested in milk testing because, well, I come from a a food microbiology background and I've worked on milk for a long time, so we focused on milk in terms of the initial application, but I will describe some faeces testing later on. So we did this work in two phases.
The first thing we did was test bulk tank milk from Northern Ireland dairy herds, supplying Dale Farm who were a partner on our project. So, Dale Farm Laboratory were able to supply us with residual bulk tank milk samples from their milk recording stream. We tested a total of 392 bulk tank milks by milk Eliza at a commercial lab in England and then by PHMS QPCR at Queen's.
And then Dale Farm were able to supply us with results of other milk analysis that we could compare . And see if there was any correlations between map presence and any of these other test results. So, Of the 392 bulk tank milks, 104 of these tested positive by our new age-based test, and counts indicated by the test result, by the QPCR results ranged between 1 and 8,432 map per 50 mL of milk.
Now contrast that with only 9 of 340 bulk tank milks testing positive by the map milk Eliza. So for bulk tank milk where you've got the milk of different cows, combined and . Map positive milks diluted out with map negative milks, the milk Eliza is, is not that great at detecting positive animals.
These results would suggest. Now in terms of the overall spread or distribution of map in the samples. That we tested, the good news was that 73.2% of the milk samples showed no evidence of viable map at all.
And, only about, I think it was 4 or 5 farms, gave us the highest contamination levels of map, which was, and then the spread, as you can see in the graph here. So, some of these farms then were taken into the next phase phase of testing where we, we looked at individual animals. I'll come to that in a moment.
But whenever we compared the egomagnetic PCR results, which is this one here, number of per 50 mL, there was no significant positive or negative correlation with any of the other analysis and particularly not with the mobilizer, so. A positive or a high somatic cell count did not relate to the presence of map. A high total bacterial count did not relate to the presence of map.
So that was interesting finding, possibly not unexpected given that amalis is targeting the antibodies and our test is targeting the actual infectious agent. So then we went on, we went on and we got milk from 4 of those most infected farms. And we collected those milks alongside milk recording samples, so they were actually collected from the milk recording jars and not by aseptic milking from the individual animals.
So the same thing happened again. We subjected the milk samples to the milkliza. And to our test at Queens and once again, we had the other test results to compare those results to.
In terms of, comparison of the mobilizer with our assay results for individual animals, 27 of 227 animals tested positive by Eliza, so in that case it was 12% of animals, and 21.5% of animals tested positive for viable map by our new assay. And the main kinds of map ranged slightly lower in the individual animal milks from 6.7 to 42.1 map per 50 mL.
So you can see in the individual farms, A, B, and C, the number of individual animals picked up by the mugliza ranged from 7.5 to 1 to 26.2% of animals.
With the new assay, the prevalence of infected animals was between 17 and 24% of animals. So that seemed to back up our our earlier finding of those four farms having the highest levels of map in their bob tank mugs. But once again, there was no correlation found between the number of map detected by the varo magnetic separation QPCR assay and a positive Eliza result, although there was variation on the different farms, there was no significant correlation.
Really. So the other big question was, whenever we get a positive PHMS QPCR result, does that really indicate the presence of a viable map? Well, in the case of the individual milks, we were able to culture a second aloquat.
That had been stored in the freezer for a few weeks, and we cultured those in a liquid broth for 12 weeks and then we PCR'd the broth and in 85.2% of those PHMS QPCR positive individual milk samples, we did detect map. So that seems to indicate that they that there was actually a viable map in the majority of test positive individual milks.
Which is reassuring and it gives credence to our claim that our test is for viable map. Now I mentioned that we have tested some bovine faeces also with the new test. We did that in two phases as well, and we were looking for test positive animals by the existing .
Yoni's diagnostic tests and test negative animals so that we had the two cohorts of infected and non-infected animals that we could then work out diagnostic characteristics of our new test. So in the course of finding Map infected animals. We found 28 animals from 9 dairy herds that tested positive by either the blood Eliza and or faecal QPCR testing.
10 of the animals were both positive by both tests and . For the same 10 animals, then 10 of them tested positive by our PHMS QPCR Isa, and 8 of them tested positive in the milk. By milk testing by the new assay.
In the one animal which was only faecal QPCR positive, that animal was also picked up when faeces were tested by the new age-based test, but not in the milk of that animal. And in 17 animals where only the blood Eliza was positive, . Only 8 of those animals tested positive in the faeces and 5 tested positive in their milk.
So it appeared that our test had the greatest reliability if either it was faecal PCR positive or both Eliza and faecal QPCR positive, and you can see an indication of the numbers of viable map that were being picked up or being indicated by our test for faeces. 24 to 18,000 map per gramme and for milk 7 to 135 map per 50 mL of milk. So as you would expect, much higher map levels in faeces than in milk.
The surprise came then when we went on and we found identified 60 animals in a single dairy herd that tested negative by both blood Eliza and faecal QPCR testing. So there was no indication that any of these animals were positive for yonis. And whenever we test them with our new test, 13 animals showed.
Map in their faces. Only 3 animals showed map in their milk only, and 17 animals showed map in both their faeces and milk. So that equated to 500% of animals positive in their faeces and 33.3% positive in their milk samples, totally unexpected, real head scratcher.
How do you explain in a herd that has no indication of a map infection by the currently used diagnostic tests, but so many of them are showing up positive. By our new test. Is it the case that our new test is giving us false positives?
We don't think so, but more work obviously needs to be done, . But in the case when we looked at the numbers or considered the numbers indicated by our new test, there were much lower levels of positivity in the faeces and lower levels in the milk as well. So it's a case there are lower levels of infection, but our new test appears to be able to still detect those low levels.
So if I go back to the little graph I showed earlier, which indicates when an antibody test would turn positive with the existing tests or the faecal QPCR would test positive. Which would be slightly earlier. If I then put in, if our test has a lower detection limit.
It would maybe run somewhere down here, in which case you'd get a positive test much earlier, test result much earlier. And you might, you definitely get pick up the bacteria much earlier in this stage of the disease as well. So it just appears that our test is able to detect lower numbers of viable map and hence it's potentially.
Able to detect animals in earlier stages of Joe's disease, which of course would be an advantage for Yish's disease control purposes where you want to identify infected animals as early as possible that you can make informed decisions about what to do with them. So this table gives you a comparison of the characteristics of the new test with some of the existing Joe's disease diagnostics, which many of you will probably be familiar with. In terms of ability to distinguish viable and dead map, our test and culture and a similar test on the market called the Actifage test.
Are able to detect our distinguished viable and dead map. The Eliza can't and the QPCR assays can't. In terms of time to results.
The haoes are one-day tests. Obviously, Eliza is much quicker. The QPCRs are slightly quicker, but still one day tests, but culture is extremely slow.
In terms of sample types that can be tested, the new test can be applied to milk, to faeces, to blood, and potentially tissues. So it has the broadest sample type range of all of the tests. In terms of sensitivity and for our individual milk results, we were able to determine the calculate the sensitivity or estimate the sensitivity, and it turned out to be 70% and specificity 96%.
So that's akin to culture. Which is up to 70% sensitive. And it's also akin to, the sensitivity of QPCR assess in the latter stages of disease, but it's much more sensitive than, the Eliza, which are pretty low.
Bloodlyza may be getting up to around 26% sensitive and milkizer around 16% sensitive. And our test had a good specificity, but that's similar to all of the existing urine tests really. So what are the future prospects of this new essay?
Well, there's a bit more work to be done in terms of the new test. We're not there yet and having a test to mark. Further validation is needed, in these main areas listed here, so.
We want to optimise the sample preparation and methods for sample types other than milk because we've done the most work on milk, but we'd like to optimise for faeces and for blood. We want to look at other larger capacity magnetic separation devices which would allow higher throughput of samples. We want to test out the combination of our age coated beads with commercial map QPCR kits that would be used already in Yi's disease diagnostic labs to assure ourselves that equivalent sensitivity could be.
Reached in that situation. We also want to do a bit more work on the correlation with culture results just to verify that really what we are detecting is viable map and there's no possibility that it could be just stray DNA in there somehow. We need to successfully transfer the technology to another lab, we haven't done that as yet, and we are hoping to identify a commercialization partner to get the new test to market.
As soon as possible, but that realistically that's not going to be for a little while yet. So how might the new test be used to aid Yoni's control in the future? Well, I've demonstrated an application for herd level screening of bug type milk, and if we used it in that way, we could identify farms with the biggest uni's problem.
And hence direct control efforts, so If you take the example of the bulk tank milk testing I showed earlier, only a small percentage of farms had high levels of map in their bulk type milk. It would be those farms where you'd focus your your efforts rather than trying to cover all farms potentially. You could use the test for faecal or milk testing of individual animals on minfected farms.
That had been identified by the herd level screening, and this would be to rapidly identify which animals are infected, which animals are super shedders, and that would mean more timely herd management decisions could be made. We could follow up on individual map infected animals over time, so we could, if an animal tests positive on one occasion, we could repeat test it periodically and only when it, you know, starts shedding higher levels of, of map, would you then take a decision to maybe remove it from the herd or cull it. But principally, well, principally in our hands, we would hope to use it as a research tool to quantify viable map, .
And maybe we could use it to monitor the efficacy of on-farm pasteurizers or to identify in effective disinfectants for use on map infected farms. Just any application where you'd want to know numbers or monitor numbers after a treatment, we believe that would be a useful way to use our tests. So there's a second poll question coming up.
If we can have the 2nd poll, please. So which suggested use of the new test would you consider to be the most exciting prospect in terms of Yoni's disease control? So, on the basis of the information, I just summarised on this latest slide.
Would it be for herd level screening of all time milk? Would it be for faecal testing of individual animals? Would it be for monitoring of individual animals over time, or just as a research tool, or all of them or most of the above?
Which would you consider the most exciting prospect? I'm just letting people vote there Irene, we'll we'll see how we get on if. We want to vote reasonably quickly so we can, we can crack on, if you.
Have maybe another 2030 seconds just to read those through cause there's actually quite a lot on those slides so you can decide what's your, your best option. And yeah, I think we can then look at that. So we've got .
Option one is 10% Irene, then 50% going for faecal or milk testing of individual animals and herds identified as map infected via BTM screening. Then 10% saying monitoring of individual map infected animals over time to aid decision making of when to cull. 20% saying use it as a research tool.
And then 10% saying all of the above, all or most of the above, so, really quite well spread out, but obviously number 2 is the most popular. OK, thanks for your responses, that's, that's good. So you see it being most .
Exciting to use it as a test for individual animals. Thanks for your response, so. So my conclusions there in terms of my presentation.
The new assay is a more streamlined, easy to use, specific and sensitive test than our previous PMS phage assay, and it rapidly detects and quantifies viable mapping milk. It's a rapid alternative to culture. Culture used to be the gold standard.
It's sorry, losing favour because it's so slow, so this would be a rapid alternative to previous culture tests. Our findings clearly demonstrate that the novel assay could be useful milk surveillance or mote monitoring tool. It would inform Yumi's disease herd level or her prevalence nationally or within herd prevalence of the farm level.
It can be applied to multiple sample types, milk, faeces, blood, potentially tissues as well. But it does need to go undergo further validation. So as we've got some good data to date, we really need to do a bit more, to properly validate the assay and get it ready to become a, a commercial test.
And I hopefully I've demonstrated that there are a number of ways in which it could be employed to accelerate your disease control efforts. So thank you very much for attention and have you any questions, please. Thank you very much, Irene, that was excellent.
We'll see if any questions come up. I think there's one that just, again, just to thank all the sponsors that have helped us to make the. The virtual congress possible at such a reasonable rate and letting you know that we've got obviously live lectures tomorrow again at the normal time.
I think we've also this evening one o'clock in in the morning got our our first Spanish live webinar obviously there's there's vets from all over Latin America listening so they will be able to be. Up, in the evening rather in the middle of the night. Tomorrow we've got, Doctor James Carpenter at 8 a.m.
He's going to be talking about pharmacotherapeutics and exotic small animals, small mammals. At 10 p.m.
Back into cattle, we're going to be looking at herd udder health with Joss Nordhausen. And then at 7 p.m.
One of my favourite lectures I was lectured by him when I was at university, Derek Nottenbelt is gonna be talking about uveitis in horses, so some great webinars tomorrow as well. . So we have a question, we just have Laura, yeah, is a, is a student, I think, and she's saying this is a student question.
I'm sure it would be a very good one. As MAP has a zoonotic potential, how dangerous is it to butcher those infected cows for human public health? OK, well, in terms of map and meet, there's quite limited data on The prevalence of mapping meat at retail level.
There have been a couple of studies sort of at slaughterhouse level and there is a possibility that mapping faeces on the hide of an animal could get onto the meat or the carcass and then be spread maybe to mince or if there was map in lymph nodes of an infected animal that could potentially end up in minced beef as well. But really there isn't sufficient data to support meat being a big contributor. I think the jury would say that it's the dairy side of things which is .
Has the highest probability of having map in there at levels that might be significant for for human health. Thanks Irene, we've got another question. Could the new assay be used for small ruminants, particularly goats, where yoni, you know, I'm sure as you know, is a, is a common problem in dairy herds.
Sure. Well, I mean, we have it on milk we have it on faeces and on blood, so any of those samples can come from a goat as well as a As a, as a cow, so we haven't tested specifically from goats yet, but it should work just as well for those samples. Great, great, good.
Any more questions, anything that people want to chat about, perhaps if you can just let us know, obviously our first cattle webinar, where you're listening in from. Today it's always fascinating to see where you are listening in from. If you are in the UK, perhaps which area, I'm presuming the majority of you are cattle vets, but perhaps let us know if you're, you know, purely large animal or if you're doing some mixed practise, so we get a sense of, what everybody is doing, and those of you listening from abroad, obviously let us know what you.
What you do as well. Daniella is saying great, is adequate to use for milking in any phase. I'm not sure I completely understand that.
I don't know if you do, Irene. Daniella's saying, is it, is adequate to use for milk in any phase at the PCR. Wonder, does she mean raw or pasteurised?
Yeah, do you want to just explain what you mean by ha Daniela. Yeah, OK, so it boils down to numbers present, you know, pasteurisation is likely to have some effect on numbers present and obviously then that impacts the sensitivity of the test. But given that our sensitivity of the test is, you know, very low 1050 mL of milk, it will detect in both instances liable to be higher numbers of viable map in raw milk as opposed to pasteurised.
And I think Daniella, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're listening in from Serbia, is that right? If I remember correctly, I could be, I could be wrong. But it'd be great to hear where everybody else is listening in from.
So yeah, Daniels in Serbia. I know we've got a few UK vets in. Where, where is everybody else listening in from just before we let Irene know and perhaps let us know if Yoni's is a problem in your country.
So obviously we know it's a problem in the UK. Anna's listening in from Houston in Texas, so we know that there's problems in in America with your map. Delhi in Barbados.
Is there much of a problem in Barbados and also Jasmine in New Zealand, which again, seems to have an issue as well. So, good to see where people are listening in from. I'm sure we do have a few UK vets in.
I, I noticed a few names that I recognise. There we go. Eleanor is listening in from Cambridge.
So, just to say, I've really enjoyed that, Irene, hopefully that's interesting data for you from the, the numbers who've replied of, of how they see the, the tests potentially being used, and I do hope you have success at turning that into commercial offering for for vets for. You know, what is clearly a very difficult disease that we still need to master in the UK don't we? Thank you very much.
Thanks so much, Irene, thanks everyone for listening and hope to see you on another webinar in the next couple of days, but do also go in, have a look in the exhibition, we've got some sponsors there and also do get involved in the Hoover app where, You can always ask other questions to the speakers if you think about them. So Daniella's asking for, do you have a website or address? I presume that's for you, Irene, rather than us.
Do you, do you have that. You'll find me on the Queen's website or via the Queen's website, . Yeah, if you go to Queen's University Belfast, Daniella, and then look up Irene there with an email address and so on if you have any, any more questions.
And I hope that's been useful for everybody today. Thank you once again, Irene, and enjoy the rest of your evening. Take care, bye bye.
Thank you.