An outbreak of tuberculosis in a captive herd of Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx): diagnosis and monitoring

Abstract

An outbreak of tuberculosis induced a mortality of 25 per cent in a captive herd of Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx). The diagnostic screening tests used on live animals included the comparative skin test, indirect and comparative ELISA tests and lymphocyte transformation tests. Difficulties in the interpretation of these tests stemmed principally from the facts that false negatives and false positives were encountered and that the threshold of positivity was difficult to establish with the ELISA test. The presence of other mycobacterial infections in the environment was almost certainly a complicating factor.