Western blotting como método diagnóstico para neosporose: revisão de literatura

Abstract

Neosporosis is a parasitic disease that generates major economic losses in cattle industry worldwide, causing abortions. It has been caused by the agent Neospora spp., a protozoan parasite that, since its identification, has been studied on a large scale. The transmission of this parasite can be either vertically or horizontally, and can infect a variety of warm-blooded animals, with canids being the definitive hosts. There are many techniques for the diagnosis of neosporosis by direct or indirect analysis. Western Blotting is a protein detection method that has made great progress in the study of several diseases because it is a high specificity and sensitivity examination, coupled with fast execution, accuracy and affordable cost for diagnostic confirmation in veterinary medicine. Given this, this literature review will address neosporosis, the main diagnostic methods, with emphasis on Western immunoblotting.