{"id":374181,"date":"2026-03-31T05:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/374181\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:25:09","slug":"standard-tb-skin-test-may-under-diagnose-older-cows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/374181\/","title":{"rendered":"Standard TB skin test may under-diagnose older cows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The findings suggest that a significant number of older cows may carry the disease for many years without being caught by the standard annual skin test. Stock image: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/27994c1f-a02a-4d59-bc0e-2e3b667f04fa.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">The findings suggest that a significant number of older cows may carry the disease for many years without being caught by the standard annual skin test. Stock image: Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">New research has revealed that the standard bovine tuberculosis (bTB) skin test may be significantly under-diagnosing older adult cows in Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A study involving over 267,000 cattle found that while skin test results usually peak in animals around three years old, the more sensitive \u2018interferon-gamma\u2019 (GIF) assay shows a very different trend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The findings suggest that a significant number of older cows may carry the disease for many years without&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[37550,103,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-374181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-ciaran-moran","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}