Could a bovine pregnancy rapid test be an alternative to a commercial pregnancy-associated glycoprotein ELISA test in dairy cattle?

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to compare a Bovine Pregnancy Rapid Test (Ubio quickVET; BPRT) with a commercial ELISA-PAG test (Bovine Pregnancy Test DG29®) for early pregnancy diagnosis based on the presence of the PAG (pregnancy-associated glycoprotein) in dairy cattle between 30 and 40 days after artificial insemination (AI). Blood samples were collected from 212 cows between 30 and 40 days after artificial insemination (AI) to quantify the concentrations of PAG in each sample. Transrectal ultrasonography (TRUS) diagnosis of pregnancy was conducted at day 45 ± 3 after AI as the reference standard for the two PAG tests. The results indicated the sensitivity (Se) of the BPRT and DG29 for diagnosing pregnant cattle were 89.4% and 100%, respectively while the specificity (Sp) of the two tests for diagnosis of non-pregnant animals was 89.8% and 81.3%, respectively. Based on these results, the BPRT has a slightly lesser sensitivity and greater specificity than the DG29 test. Moreover, the accuracy of both tests was 94% and 90% respectively for DG29 and BPRT. This implies that the BPRT test could be considered an accurate test when compared to PAG-ELISA test and TRUS at days 30-40 after AI. The BPRT test, therefore, can be used as an alternative to the PAG-ELISA test with some constraints that need to be considered with its use.

Keywords: Cattle; ELISA; Pregnancy diagnosis; Pregnancy-associated glycoprotein; Transrectal ultrasound; Ubio quickVET.