author(s)
Sweety, Nirmal Sangwan and Komal

abstract
For identification of diagnostic/prognostic indicators for infectious diarrhoea in buffalo calves, blood and faecal samples from 30 diarrhoeic calves were collected. Six healthy buffalo calves' constituted goup I as control. Out of 30 diarrhoeic calves from which blood and faecal samples were collected, 3 animals were found positive for Balantidium coli (Group II), 16 animals for Strongyle/Strongyloid spp. (Group III), 3 animals for Eimeria spp. (GroupIV), and rest 8 animals were not having any parasitic burden and grouped as non- parasitic one (GroupV). After removal of excess of albumin, separation of plasma proteins by SDS-PAGE revealed clearly disease related changes in protein/peptide bands. In group- I, total number of protein/peptide bands in TCA/Acetone treated precipitate were 17, while 17, 15, 14 and 19 number of major protein bands were present in groups-II to V respectively. Similarly, 5 major protein bands were present in supernatant of control group whereas 8, 9, 9, 9 protein bands were present in diarrhoeic groups II to V respectively. Proteins having molecular wt. of approx. 43.3 kD corresponding to alpha-1 acid glycoprotein was found to be down regulated in groups III and IV indicating lowered ability of the animals to neutralize toxins whereas upregulation of proteins having molecular wt. of approx. 62.2 and 44.6 kD corresponding to α-2 macroglobulin and α-1 protease inhibitor respectively. The main functions of these proteins to mainly inhibit proteases and is found to be increased in chronic liver diseases pointing towards the damaging effects of infection on liver.