Studies on the efficiency of absorbed bovine PPD in tuberculin and serological tests

The passive haemagglutination, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and indirect fluorescent antibody tests were applied to study the non-specific reactions in experimentally infected guinea pigs and tuberculin positive bovines. These cross-reactions were greatly decreased after absorption of either sera with avian PPD or bovine PPD antigen with anti-avian PPD serum. The use of both absorbed sera and antigen raised the specificity of PHA and ELISA to 100%. The use of absorbed sera rendered the IFA specific in 95%. The absorption has reduced the sensitivity of ELISA, IFA and PHA by 14, 27 and 29%, respectively.