Year: 2023 | Month: October | Volume 13 | Issue 5
Serological Evidence of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Nonstructural Protein Antibodies in Indian Elephants (Elephas maximus indicus)
M. Rout
P. Deka
N.S. Nair
M. Karikalan
V. Manjunatha
N. Sahoo
A.K. Sharma
J.K. Mohapatra and R.P. Singh
DOI:10.30954/2277-940X.05.2023.25
Abstract:
Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) remains one of the most economically devastating menace in livestock due to its highly contagious nature with multispecies involvement. In the present study, a serological survey to detect antibodies against structural and non-structural protein (NSP) of FMD virus (FMDV) in elephants was conducted. A total of 255 elephant serum samples from 5 different states of India were collected with due permission from the competent authorities. A competitive ELISA using commercial kit PrioCHECK® FMDV NS (Prionics AG, Switzerland) was performed to assess antibodies against FMDV 3ABC non-tructural protein. A total of 2.74% (7/255) animals were found positive indicating their previous exposure to FMDV. The serum samples were also subjected to in-house liquid phase blocking ELISA to assess the level of protective antibody against FMDV serotypes O, A and Asia 1, where none of the animals was found to have protective antibody (log10 titre of ≥1.8) against all three serotype strains used in the vaccine formulation. In conclusion, the study gathered a low level of serological evidence of virus activity as well as lack of protective antibody against FMDV in the sampled elephants. Further investigations into the dynamics of anti-FMDV antibodies supplemented with virological examination should be carried out to understand the virus ecology and disease epidemiology. In order to establish absolute freedom from infection, oesophageal-pharyngeal fluid collected from the NSP-positive animals could further be examined for the presence of viral genome by polymerase chain reaction or for virus isolation to understand the carrier status in this species.
Highlights
- Total 255 elephant sera from 5 states of India were tested for FMDV NSP antibodies
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