Objective
The objectives of the Concerted Action (CA) are to accelerate and coordinate the development and validation of new methods for the diagnosis of Foot-and-Mouth disease (FMD), especially those which offer a chance to identify infected contact holdings before they become the source of further spread of the disease as well as of methods that could limit the economic consequences of FMD for affected areas after emergency vaccination. The research efforts of seven European FMD laboratories will be coordinated during the next 3 years and 4 workshops will be organized. FMD is an extremely contagious viral disease of cloven-hoofed animals which results in considerable economic losses. Especially in areas of high animal density the epidemiology of the disease could take a catastrophic course, leading to a situation where the usefulness of established diagnostic tests would be limited. As antibody to structural proteins is produced following either infection or vaccination its detection does not differentiate animals which have merely been vaccinated from those which have been infected. Emergency 'ring' vaccination may be needed as an adjunct to stamping out to control the spread of infection. Cattle, including vaccinated cattle, can carry FMDV in their oropharynx for up to 2 years. Therefore, if ring vaccination is performed, it will be necessary to identify animals in which viral replication has taken place in order to prevent the establishment of virus carriers. As long as there are no diagnostic means available for swift and broad scale screening of vaccinated populations, the economic value of vaccinated animal populations could collaps due to trade restrictions imposed in order to prevent further spread of the disease. The CEC sponsored a CA (19941997) to coordinate the research into the potential use of assays measuring antibody to the non-structural (NS) proteins of FMD virus to differentiate infected from vaccinated animals. In animals seropositive for antibody to structural proteins, the detection of antibody to the polyprotein 3ABC was found to be the most reliable single indicator of infection. On a herd or group basis, measurement of antibody to the NS proteins can be used to detect previous infection in a vaccinated population. Preliminary results justify further research. However, absolute differentiation of infection from vaccination is not possible by serological means alone. Thus serology has to be complemented by other assays. Currently the established test to ensure freedom from infective FMD virus in individual animals of a vaccinated population is the probang test. This test, or a variant using nasal swabs, is used to diagnose FMD where epithelial tissue is not available, e.g. Where infection is suspected in the absence of clinical signs. This also applies to prodromal stages of disease, when already considerable amounts of virus can be excreted as well as to subclinical cases, especially in small ruminants. Since the probang test is laborious and time consuming, broad scale screening of ruminants, whether in contact holdings after a primary outbreak or in a vaccinated area is not feasible or would take too much time to be useful. Principally, nucleic acid recognition methods are an alternative to virus isolation. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) can be used to amplify genome fragments of FMD virus in diagnostic material. However, in order to at least match the sensitivity of virus isolation, a nested PCR has to be performed. This method is laborious and prone to give false positive results. Therefore also PCR currently can't be employed for broad scale screening campaigns or premovement testing of large numbers of animals. Advanced PCR protocols ('PCR-ELISA') that could at least partially overcome these problems have been described but have to be optimized arid validated for the diagnosis of FMD. Another diagnostic approach that should be evaluated is the isotype-specific detection of antibodies to FMD in oesophageal-pharyngeal fluid.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules nucleic acids
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology virology
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules proteins
- agricultural sciences animal and dairy science domestic animals animal husbandry
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Coordinator
72076 TUEBINGEN
Germany
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