Detection of African Swine Fever antibodies by immunoblotting assay

Abstract

The detection of African swine fever virus antibody by immunoblotting assay on samples of swine sera collected from the Livestock Investigation Department (LID), National Veterinary Research Institute's Pig farm is reported. African swine fever (ASF) was first described in Kenya at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Montgomery, 1921). Since then the disease has been reported in a large number of African Countries South of the equator (Wilkinson, 1981; Plowright 1984). Although the disease was once reported in Nigeria in Ogun State in 1973, it resurfaced again in 1997 through the South Western Part of the country most probably by cross boarder contact with infected pig/pig products smuggled from neighboring Benin and Cameroon Republics (Anon, 1998; Empres, 1998; Majiyagbe, 1999). Within a short period, the disease became widely distributed through pig producing areas of Nigeria and has been causing a lot of devastation to the National Pig herd. One of the earliest cases reported in Nigeria was an outbreak at the cooperative farm, Oko – Oba, Agege – Lagos, between mid 1997 and early 1998 where extensive mortality occurred (Odemuyiwa et al, 2000). At present, there is no known cure for infected pigs or vaccine available to protect surviving pigs. Control of the disease is based on accurate diagnosis and mass slaughter of infected and in contact pigs in order to prevent further disease spread (Wilkinson, 1989). Previous reports on the serodiagnosis of ASF in Nigeria relied on the use of indirect – enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (I – ELISA) and hemadsorption (HAD) test (Majiyagbe, 1999; Luther 2001; Luther et al., 2002). There are no published reports on the use of immunoblotting assay for ASF diagnosis in Nigeria. In this work, we report the application of immunoblotting assay for ASF virus antibody detection on swine sera collected from the LID of the National Veterinary Research Institute's pig farm, which previously tested positive to ASF virus antibody by I – ELISA.

Keywords: Detection, ASF antibodies, immunoblotting assay.

Nigerian Veterinary Journal Vol. 27 (2) 2006: pp. 71-74