Immunohistochemical diagnosis of infectious diseases of sheep

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is a highly specific and sensitive technique which is now available to aid in the confirmation of diagnosis of many diseases of sheep. When available for use on formalin fixed, paraffin wax-embedded tissue samples, it can be used widely for prospective cases as well as on retrospective studies on archive material. However, for each disease it is vital to select the most appropriate tissue organ samples, to fix them correctly and to be aware of potential limitations of each individual immunohistochemical methodology. In this paper we present a review of many of the diseases of sheep for which specific IHC has been reported including the sources of the reagents and technical aspects of the methodologies.