ABSTRACT
Infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) is responsible for a highly contagious disease of poultry causing severe immunosuppression in chickens. A double antibody sandwich ELISA (DAS-ELISA) was developed to detect IBDV from clinical samples. Two kinds of anti-IBDV antibodies, monoclonal antibody R63 and chicken anti-IBDV sera, were used for DAS-ELISA. Detection limit of IBDV by DAS-ELISA was approximately 10(2.7) EID(50)/ml. The DAS-ELISA detected IBDV from most (13/14) of vaccine products including mild, intermediate and intermediate-plus types. The DAS-ELISA also detected IBDV from all (19/19) of field Korean isolates including very virulent and intermediate-plus phenotypes. Our results indicate that the DAS-ELISA would provide useful diagnostic tool to detect IBDV from clinical samples as well as rapid quantitative detection of IBDV.
Subject(s)
Antibodies, Monoclonal , Chickens , Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay , Immunosuppression Therapy , Infectious bursal disease virus , Limit of Detection , Phenotype , Poultry , VirusesABSTRACT
Infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) causes a highly contagious and immunosuppressive disease of chicken. Agar gel immunodiffusion using IBDV antigen extracted from bursa of Fabricius of infected chicken has been used officially for diagnosis of IBDV in Korea. In this study, in order to replace the IBDV whole virus antigen with non-infectious antigen, recombinant VP2 protein (rVP2) of IBDV was produced using recombinant baculovirus expression system. Purified baculovirus-expressed rVP2 was used as an antigen in an agar gel immunodiffusion (AGID). rVP2 antigen precipitated specifically IBDV antibodies. AGID using rVP2 antigen detected anti-IBDV antibodies from 6 dpi to 28 dpi (termination of the experiment) when specific pathogen free chickens were experimentally infected with IBDV 52/70 strain. This was consistent with result by AGID using IBDV antigen, virus neutralization test (VNT) and a commercial ELISA kit (except for one serum). The sensitivity of rVP2 was the same with that of IBDV antigen when field sera (n=324) were tested by AGID. However, AGID using rVP2 antigen detected maternal antibodies from broiler chickens (n=20) on a broiler farm up to 15 days old, although the detection rate of the AGID was relatively low compared to a commercial ELISA kit. Our results indicate that IBDV whole virus antigen from IBDV infected chickens would be replaced with recombinant VP2 protein as an antigen for AGID.