More effective methods to detect bovine tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium bovis, in wildlife, is of paramount importance for preventing disease spread to other wild animals, livestock, and human beings. In this study, we analyzed the volatile organic compounds emitted by fecal samples collected from free-ranging wild boar captured in Doñana National Park, Spain, with an electronic nose system based on organically-functionalized gold nanoparticles. The animals were separated by the age group for performing the analysis. Adult (>24 months) and sub-adult (12–24 months) animals were anesthetized before sample collection, whereas the juvenile (<12 months) animals were manually restrained while collecting the sample. Good accuracy was obtained for the adult and sub-adult classification models: 100% during the training phase and 88.9% during the testing phase for the adult animals, and 100% during both the training and testing phase for the sub-adult animals, respectively. The results obtained could be important for the further development of a non-invasive and less expensive detection method of bovine tuberculosis in wildlife populations.

中文翻译：

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通过电子鼻系统测量粪便中挥发性有机化合物来检测野猪中结核分枝杆菌复合物感染的有创方法

检测牛分枝杆菌引起的牛结核病的更有效方法对于防止疾病传播到其他野生动物，牲畜和人类至关重要。在这项研究中，我们使用了基于有机功能化金纳米粒子的电子鼻系统，分析了从西班牙多纳那国家公园捕获的自由放养野猪收集的粪便样品中释放的挥发性有机化合物。将动物按年龄组分开进行分析。成年（> 24个月）和亚成年（12-24个月）的动物在样品采集前先进行麻醉，而幼年（<12个月）的动物则在采集样品时进行人工约束。成年和亚成年分类模型获得了良好的准确性：成年动物在训练阶段为100％，在测试阶段为88.9％，在成年动物的训练和测试阶段分别为100％和100％。获得的结果对于进一步开发一种野生生物种群中的非侵入性且成本较低的牛结核病检测方法可能具有重要意义。