Evaluation of Different Antigens in Western Blotting Technique for the Diagnosis of Sheep Haemonchosis

Background: to use different methods for serodiagnosis of ruminants’ haemonchosis is important because detection of eggin the faeces is not so reliable.methods: peptide bands of 5 different crude antigens of intestine, uterus, cuticle, whole male and whole female of haemonchuscontortus were determined using sds-page and western blotting. five lambs were infected with 10,000 thirdstage larvae of h.contortus and 2 parasites free were kept as control. positive and negative sera collected from infected andno infected animal were tested using western blotting for immunodiagnostic antigens.results: in electrophoresis the major peptide bands of crud antigens of uterus, intestine, cuticle, whole male and whole femaleof h. contortus were 7, 2, 6, 8 and 5, respectively at molecular weights of 15 to 110 kda. in immunoblotting positiveand negative sera were compared and the molecular weight of specific protein bands for haemonchus in sheep was determined.two major peptide bands belong to intestine and uterus with 35 and 40 kda molecular weight, respectively, werespecific for diagnosis of the parasite infection.conclusion: our findings suggest the use of these antigens with different molecular weights for immunodiagnosis of haemonchosisin sheep as a primary screening test is promising.