ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Zoological Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1626094
This article is part of the Research TopicSurveillance and Control of Wildlife Diseases: Integrating Ecology, Pathology, and Public HealthView all 9 articles
Development of an colloidal gold immunochromatography assay strip for the diagnosis of Babesia canis
Provisionally accepted
- College of Veterinary Medicine, Shanxi Agricultural University, Jinzhong, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Canine babesiosis, caused by Babesia canis, is a tick-borne hemolytic disease that threatens canine health and requires rapid, reliable detection tools. This study presents a colloidal gold immunochromatographic assay (CGIA) strip utilizing a recombinant BcMSA1-BcSA1 fusion protein, expressed in Escherichia coli and purified with a yield of 2.5 mg/L, combining hydrophilic domains of merozoite surface antigen (BcMSA1) and secreted antigen (BcSA1) to enhance antibody recognition. The strip exhibited high specificity, showing no cross-reactivity with sera positive for Theileria spp., Toxoplasma gondii, Ancylostoma caninum, Eimeria canis, Canine distemper virus, or Canine parvovirus. The CGIA demonstrated a detection limit of 1:8 when tested with B. canis-positive serum samples and retained its efficacy after 18 months of storage at room temperature. A total of 72 serum samples were collected from veterinary clinics in Shanxi Province, China, and tested using a commercial ELISA kit. The same samples were used to evaluate our CGIA, which showed a sensitivity of 84% and a specificity of 93.6%, with an almost perfect agreement (Cohen’s Kappa = 0.935) compared to the ELISA test. This stable, user-friendly CGIA strip offers an efficient point-of-care solution for B. canis detection, overcoming limitations of traditional methods and supporting epidemiological and clinical applications in resource-limited settings.
Keywords: Babesia canis, Colloidal gold, Rapid detection, BcMSA1-BcSA1 fusion protein, CGIA
Received: 10 May 2025; Accepted: 04 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Liu, Qiu, Zhao, Zhou, Ma, Wu, Li, Mao and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jianzhong Wang, College of Veterinary Medicine, Shanxi Agricultural University, Jinzhong, China
Yiduo Liu, College of Veterinary Medicine, Shanxi Agricultural University, Jinzhong, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.