J Vet Sci.  2003 Apr;4(1):51-56.

Estimation of Paratuberculosis Prevalence in Dairy Cattle in a Province of Korea using an Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay: Application of Bayesian Approach

• Pak SI
• Kim D
• Salman M

Abstract

To draw inferences about the sensitivity and specificity of the newly developed ELISA test for bovine paratuberculosis (PTB) diagnosis and posterior distribution on the prevalence of PTB in a province of Korea, we applied Bayesian approach with Gibbs sampler to the data extracted from the prevalence study in 1999. The data were from a single test results without a designated gold test. The prevalence estimates for PTB in study population ranged 3.2~5.3% for conservative and 6.7~7.1% for liberal, depending on the priors used. The simulated specificities of the ELISA close to one another, ranging 84.7~90.6%, whereas the sensitivity was somewhat spread out depending largely on the priors with a range of 46.4~88.2%. Our findings indicate that the ELISA method appeared useful as a screening tool at a minimum level in comparison to other diagnostic tests available for this disease in terms of sensitivity. However, this advantage comes at a cost of having low specificity of the test.

Keyword

Mycobacterium paratuberculosis; ELISA; Bayesian; Gibbs sampling

MeSH Terms

Animals
Bayes Theorem
Cattle
Cattle Diseases/*epidemiology
Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay/*methods
Korea/epidemiology
Paratuberculosis/*epidemiology
Prevalence