COMPARISON OF COMPETITIVE ELISA AND AGAR GEL IMMUNODIFFUSION TEST FOR DETECTION OF ANTIBODIES TO BLUE TONGUE VIRUS

Abstract

The agar gel iminunodiffusion (AGID) test is the widely used test for detection of group specific Blue Tongue Virus antibodies (Jochim, 1985). Though AGID is simple and rapid to perform, it is difficult to interpret, lacks sensitivity, is not quantitative and is complicated by cross reaction with other orbs viruses like epizootic haemorrhagic disease virus (Della-Porta et al., 1985). To over come these problems enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was introduced. Two types of ELISA have been described, an indirect test (Manning and Chen, 1980; Afsher et al., 1987) and a blocking test (Anderson, 1984) or its variant, the competitive assay using monoclonal antibody (Afsher et.al., 1987). Competitive ELISA was found to be snore specific and sensitive than AGID (Afsher et al., 1992). In the present study, competitive ELISA and AGID were used to screen the serum samples collected from cattle, sheep and goats for BTV antibodies and the paper summarises the results of these tests.