Point of care diagnostics and non-invasive sampling strategy: a review on major advances in veterinary diagnostics

Abstract

The use of point of care diagnostics (POCD) in animal diseases has steadily increased over the years since its introduction. Its potential application to diagnose infectious diseases in remote and resource limited settings have made it an ideal diagnostic in animal disease diagnosis and surveillance. The rapid increase in incidence of emerging infectious diseases requires urgent attention where POCD could be indispensable tools for immediate detection and early warning of a potential pathogen. The advantages of being rapid, easily affordable and the ability to diagnose an infectious disease on spot has driven an intense effort to refine and build on the existing technologies to generate advanced POCD with incremental improvements in analytical performance to diagnose a broad spectrum of animal diseases. The rural communities in developing countries are invariably affected by the burden of infectious animal diseases due to limited access to diagnostics and animal health personnel. Besides, the alarming trend of emerging and transboundary diseases with pathogen spill-overs at livestock-wildlife interfaces has been identified as a threat to the domestic population and wildlife conservation. Under such circumstances, POCD coupled with non-invasive sampling techniques could be successfully deployed at field level without the use of sophisticated laboratory infrastructures. This review illustrates the current and prospective POCD for existing and emerging animal diseases, the status of non-invasive sampling strategies for animal diseases, and the tremendous potential of POCD to uplift the status of global animal health care.