Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Vero cells expressing porcine circovirus type 2-capsid protein and their diagnostic application.
- Journal:
- Journal of virological methods
- Year:
- 2013
- Authors:
- Kim, Yeon-Hee et al.
- Affiliation:
- College of Veterinary Medicine and Research Institute for Veterinary Science · South Korea
Plain-English summary
This study focused on a virus called porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2), which causes a serious illness in pigs known as postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS). Researchers aimed to create a new test that could quickly and accurately detect antibodies against this virus in pig blood. They developed a method using special cells that express a part of the virus and found that their test was very sensitive, correctly identifying between 92.5% and 99.3% of cases compared to existing tests. The results also showed that the amount of antibodies detected was related to the amount of virus present in the pigs' blood, semen, and feces. Overall, the new test appears to work well for diagnosing PCV2 infections in pigs.
Abstract
Porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) is the causative agent of postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS) in swine. Although the incidences of PCV2-related diseases are ubiquitous throughout the world, the serological tools are rather limited, mainly because the virus does not induce any cytopathic effects in cells. The purpose of this study was to develop a rapid, sensitive and easy quantitative immunofluorescence assay (QIFA) using the recombinant PCV2 nucleocapsid protein (NCP) for the detection of PCV2-specific antibodies in pig sera. The recombinant PCV2 NCP was expressed in Vero cells by a lentivirus system. The performance of QIFA using these Vero cells as a diagnostic antigen was compared with currently available C-ELISA and I-ELISA; the relative sensitivity turned out to range from 92.5% up to 99.3%. The relative specificity was 93.3% when compared to C-ELISA as the gold standard. The serological experiment also indicated the inverse relationship between QIFA and the viral load in serum, semen, feces samples from 7 PCV2-positive boars. In addition, the PCV2 sequence detected from bone marrow cells shows 99% of sequence identity with PCV2 genome, confirming the infectivity of PCV2.
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Search related cases →Original publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23954842/