Estimation of the sensitivity and specificity of two serum ELISAs and one fecal qPCR for diagnosis of paratuberculosis in sub-clinically infected young-adult French sheep using latent class Bayesian modeling.

Background: The objective was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of two serum ELISAs and one quantitative PCR on feces for the diagnosis of paratuberculosis in sub-clinically infected young-adult sheep. A cross-sectional study was performed to collect 1197 individual blood and fecal samples from 2- to 3-year-old sub-clinically infected ewes in 14 closed meat sheep flocks in France. Fecal excretion was determined using qPCR based on IS900 sequence detection, and serology was performed on serum samples using two commercial ELISAs.