Advances in diagnosis of leptospirosis in livestock: An emerging zoonotic disease in humans

Leptospirosis is an emerging zoonotic disease in animals and human beings caused by pathogenic bacteria, the genus Leptospira interrogans. Transmission to humans is mainly by contact with urine of domestic and wild animal reservoirs. Early diagnosis and confirmation by ‘gold standard tests’ suggested by Office International des Epizootis (OIE) facilitates the clinical management and treatment of infected cattle at appropriate time and prevention of spread by urine of infected animals to the animal handlers, veterinarian etc. In recent years, antigen detection and antibody detection by dark-field microscopy (DFM), microscopic agglutination test (MAT) and molecular techniques (PCR) are the widely accepted techniques in diagnosis of leptospirosis.