The firm from Mungia Analítica Veterinaria Mungivet, which is dedicated, amongst other fields, to the laboratory diagnosis of animal diseases, is developing a diagnosis system which substantially improves the present systems to diagnose C. abortus and C. burnetii, the principal agents responsible for miscarriages amongst small ruminants. For this project, it is working in collaboration with the technology centre Gaiker-IK4 and Lorra, a service company which comprises agrarian cooperatives and farming and agricultural associations in Bizkaia.

Due to their zoonotic nature and easy transmission by aerosols, C. abortus and C. burnetii represent a high risk of infection for human health. In fact, C. burnetii is responsible for the disease called Q Fever, which can cause serious infection in human heart valves.

The lack of fast, reliable and economical diagnosis techniques is one of the main worries of stockbreeders and farmers. Hence, the system being developed will simultaneously diagnose both infections in less than six hours, which will contribute considerably to lowering the risk of contamination between the individual animal and the rest of the herd and at a lower cost than the systems commercialized at present.

The new system allows DNA extraction from placenta or vaginal swabs susceptible to being contaminated, and the later specific and simultaneous detection of the infective agents by means of the Multiplex-qPCR technique.