Serum proteins and lipids in mild form of calf bronchopneumonia: candidates for reliable biomarkers

Abstract

Calf bronchopneumonia is complex multifactorial disease and for its accurate diagnosis and therapy, besides clinical examination, microbiologic, hematologic and biochemical analyses could be necessary. In general, additional analyses are not implemented, mainly because the disease biomarkers are not defined. To establish which analysis might be useful for determining the severity of the disease, we analyzed 23 three-month old calves with mild clinical signs of bronchopneumonia and 15 age-matched healthy calves. Pasteurella multocida was isolated from deep nasal swabs of diseased calves. Peripheral blood erythrocyte and leukocyte count of bronchopneumonic and healthy calves showed no difference. Serum proteins, lipoproteins and lipids were analyzed with spectrophotometry, agarose gel electrophoresis, non-reducing SDS-PAGE, gel zymography, and thin-layer chromatography. The bronchopneumonic calves had an increased level of circulating immune complexes and α globulins, which contain some of the positive acute phase proteins. In diseased calves the increased concentration of total γ globulins (IgG), due to an increased concentration of anionic γ globulins (predominately IgG1), was detected. The increased concentration of anionic γ globulins followed by increased concentration of transferrin (negative acute phase protein) and HDL cholesterol, decreased concentration of LDL-cholesterol, unchanged activity of matrix metalloproteases and leukocyte counts might reflect the obvious absence of generalized inflammation. A positive correlation was found between the acquired results and the appearance of mild clinical signs. Therefore, we believe that the parameters analyzed in the peripheral blood could be applied as reliable disease markers to distinguish between severe (inflammatory) and mild forms of calf bronchopneumonia and to predict a better outcome for these calves.

Protein metabolic changes and nucleolus organizer regions activity in the lymphocytes of neonatal calves during the development of respiratory diseases

“…It is widely accepted that clinical examination of calves with BRD is not an appropriate and sufficient way to assess damage severity and functional changes in the lung tissue [5]. Therefore, there is a need for new biomarkers to forecast the individual risk of BRD development in calves to obtain higher accuracy in management strategies [3,6,7]. One of the BRD predictors of potential interest for newborn calves is the total protein concentration in blood serum [2].…”

Design of a Robust Undergraduate Biochemistry Laboratory Module Based on a Purification Scheme for Bovine Serum Albumin

“…The main contaminant removed by the anion exchange step was a protein with a gel mobility close to BSA (Figure 1B, lane 2). The protein, presumed to be transferrin, 26 eluted from the column at 150 mM NaCl concentration (Figure 2A, peak A). The instructor used this observation as a point of further discussion on pedagogical goal 3.…”

“…The gel filtration step served two main purposes: an additional purification step and exchange of buffer. Since AEC removed the closest protein in size to BSA, presumably transferrin 26 (Figure 2B, lane 2), students can alternatively perform the gel filtration step on gravity flow columns packed with Sephadex G-100 or Bio-Gel P-100. The instructor emphasized the common application of gel filtration as the final (fine-tuning) step in multistep protein purification schemes (pedagogical goals 2 and 3).…”

Strategies for Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD) Diagnosis and Prognosis: A Comprehensive Overview

“…Serum iron concentration has emerged as a potential substitute for Hp and serum amyloid A (SAA) in diagnosing respiratory diseases in cattle [212]. It is essential to identify new biomarkers to accurately assess an individual calf's risk of developing BRD and improve the management of this condition [31,[213][214][215]. There were no detectable differences between the treated and untreated animals for multiple measured analytes.…”

“…Complementary diagnostic methods such as laboratory testing, imaging, molecular diagnostics, and biomarker tracking can offer additional support but are usually prohibitively expensive [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. Interestingly, dogs have been shown to discern the scent signatures of various diseases in humans and animals, including BRD.…”