Nanotechnology in Metabolic Disease Diagnosis of Livestock Animals

Aberration in metabolic homeostasis resulting into under-utilization, over-production, deficiency or excessive storage of certain metabolites may lead to the onset of metabolic disorders. The most prevalent metabolic diseases that occur in livestock are ketosis, parturient paresis, diabetes mellitus, ovine pregnancy toxaemia, hypoglycaemia in baby pigs, hyperlipidaemia, cardiovascular diseases and genetically linked metabolic storage diseases. Deranged metabolic pathways often resulting from deficient enzymes or hormones, nutritional deficiencies, and genetic inheritance are the most common predisposing factors although acquired metabolic disorders are not uncommon in animals. Metabolic disorders such as diabetes mellitus can affect individual subjects or it can be manifested as herd disease like underfeeding ketosis affecting a group of animals. Despite having severe impact over optimal animal health and production, most of the metabolic disorders remain unnoticed, particularly in subclinical cases. Poor awareness and management, low productivity, cost-effectiveness concern and lack of adequate diagnostic facilities are some of the major factors obstructing the stewardship of such metabolic disorders. Conventional biochemical diagnostic methods or diagnostic imaging modalities often lack adequate sensitivity, rapidity, or resolution for early and precise detection of the aberration. In addition, lack of portability of the usual diagnostic modalities is another major issue for animal disease diagnosis. The progress in nanotechnology has led to the development of diverse rapid, sensitive, and accurate diagnostic techniques to overcome the issues. Several nanomaterial-based sensors have been developed which even facilitate portable animal-side disease diagnosis. Advancement in nano-science has also paved the way for customizing novel contrast agents to improve the resolution of different bioimaging modalities such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasonography, radiographic imaging, etc. Nanomedicine has already shown ample potential in disease diagnosis including the metabolic disorders, although it is yet to full-bloom, but definitely holds a bright prospect in near future.