Small ruminants, like goats, would make excellent animal models for not only infectious diseases in large ruminants but also analogous diseases in humans, such as human tuberculosis, Crohn's disease, melioidosis and brucellosis. The main disadvantage for the small ruminant model is the lack of sufficient baseline data on normal, healthy goat kids. Furthermore, most reagents (antibodies and the like) were not developed for goats or sheep. It is important to demonstrate that available resources, especially from the bovine system, cross-react with the caprine and/or ovine system. Finally, potential breed differences have to be evaluated before goat or sheep studies are compared. In this study, leukocyte cell populations were defined in twenty-six dairy goat kids via flow cytometry. We report no significant differences between three breeds of dairy goat kids and demonstrate the effective use of various antibodies for caprine immune cell markers. No breed-specific differences were detected for any leukocyte cell population or for markers specific for various antigen-presenting cells or T cell populations. Interestingly, however, statistical significant differences were found for leukocyte cell populations for the two different time points two weeks apart presented in this study.
The current gold standard diagnostic test for Johne’s disease (JD) is detecting Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) from fecal samples via culture and/or PCR. Other commercially available JD diagnostic tests focus on the detection of specific antibodies within the serum or milk of infected ruminants. These tests have a high specificity but low their sensitivity and usually fail to diagnose the disease until later stages of the disease. The ideal diagnostic test should detect infected animals already during the silent phase. Here, we evaluate the use of new and established approaches to define the silent phase of JD in experimentally infected goats. None of the established diagnostic tests or new approaches for the detection of humoral and cellular immune responses were positive during the first year of infection. Only the characterization of various subsets of peripheral blood leukocytes and the weight development gave some indication for the presence of a chronic, but silent, infection. Weight differences were present throughout the first year. In addition, some of the subsets of leukocytes (WC1+ γδ T cells, MHC class II+ leukocytes, CD1+ leukocytes, CD14+ granulocytes, and CD14+/MHC class II+ granulocytes) demonstrated significant differences, but only at certain time points.
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