Current and emerging diagnostic approaches to infectious diseases of cattle

Diagnostic approaches to endemic and emerging diseases of cattle are an area that has seen rapid changes due to advances in technology and development of new methods that utilize these technologies. Although the fundamentals to detection and diagnosis of infectious diseases are little changed (i.e. de­tection of pathogens, molecules, or markers associated with in­fectious agents) the approaches and interpretation of diagnostic findings varies greatly depending on the test method. New ad­vances in real time polymerase chain reaction (rtPCR), MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and next generation sequencing (NGS) have driven development of highly sensitive, specific and rapid pathogen detection for a variety of infectious agents. These tools have also been used to investigate numerous research questions relating to epidemiology and pathobiology in cattle. However, in some cases the interpretation of these results can be challenging and often varies depending on the disease or disease complex involved and herd or population level informa­tion. A brief review of fundamentals of these tests and interpre­tation in some clinical applications will be discussed.