Testing for Failure of Passive Transfer

When a newborn foal, for whatever reason, fails to obtain the antibodies he needs from his mother in his first hours of life, this often results in a very sick or even dead foal from septicemia. Quick identification of the problem (failure of passive transfer, or FPT) is key to his survival, but the “gold standard” test for the problem takes 18-24 hours to yield results and is best handled in a la
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When a newborn foal, for whatever reason, fails to obtain the antibodies he needs from his mother in his first hours of life, this often results in a very sick or even dead foal from septicemia. Quick identification of the problem (failure of passive transfer, or FPT) is key to his survival, but the "gold standard" test for the problem takes 18-24 hours to yield results and is best handled in a laboratory. By the time these test results can be obtained and treatment initiated, it could be too late for the foal with FPT.

J.T. McClure, DVM, MS, of the University of Prince Edward Island, presented the results of a study comparing different types of stall-side tests for FPT at the 2003 American Association of Equine Practitioners convention. The tests included a glutaraldehyde coagulation test, the CITE ELISA, the SNAP ELISA 1 (2000), and SNAP ELISA 2 (revised version released in 2001).

McClure explained that a good test for FPT needs to be both highly sensitive and highly specific. A highly sensitive test is one that produces very few false negative results, and a highly specific one produces very few false positives.

"It is essential that screening tests for FPT have a high sensitivity to minimize the number of foals with FPT misclassified as having adequate passive transfer (false negative)," he explained

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Written by:

Christy West has a BS in Equine Science from the University of Kentucky, and an MS in Agricultural Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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