Animal tuberculosis: gross lesions and anatomopathological diagnosis

• Author(s): Quintas, Helder ; Prada, Justina ; Fontes, Maria da Conceição ; Coelho, Ana Cláudia ; Pires, Isabel
• Date: 2023
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/28821
• Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
• Subject(s): Animal tuberculosis; One health
• Document Type: Book part
• Language: English
• Contributor(s): Biblioteca Digital do IPB

Description

Animal tuberculosis (TB) is a zoonotic disease with worldwide distribution that can cause serious animal infections with economic and public health concerns. In its turn, human TB is currently one of the leading causes of death in the world due to a curable disease. Although the diagnosis demands microbiological culture confirmation, anatomopathological diagnosis of suggestive lesions often provides a presumptive diagnosis of TB and is used by veterinary professionals as a central tool, either through monitoring at slaughter or when and where applicable, in clinical practice. Throughout this chapter, the anatomopathological diagnosis of animal TB will be reviewed, underling the peculiarities and similarities of TB lesions in ruminants, dogs, cats, pigs, and horses. Additionally, the importance of TB anatomopathological diagnosis in meat inspection is discussed. The last aim of this chapter is to emphasize that veterinarians and their teams, whether clinicians, pathologists, microbiologists, epidemiologists, anatomopathologists, and meat inspectors, have a central role in TB control and eradication. Only with the involvement of multidisciplinary teams of veterinary and human health professionals will it be possible to effectively combat animal and human TB in an integrated “One Health” perspective.