Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
8747057 | Journal of Virological Methods | 2018 | 18 Pages |
Abstract
Rabies is a major public health problem in developing countries in Asia and Africa. Although a number of laboratory diagnoses can be used for rabies control, the WHO and OIE recommended gold standard for rabies diagnosis is the direct fluorescent antibody test (FAT). However, FAT is not widely used in developing countries because of deficient financial sources to procure fluorescent microscope. Recently the direct rapid immunohistochemical test (dRIT) has been developed and has a worldwide promising application, particularly in developing countries, since its result can be read by inexpensive light microscopy, in addition to be consistent with that of FAT. However, no commercial conjugated antibody is available to meet the laboratory demand. We describe here the production of a monoclonal antibody (MAb) against rabies virus (RABV) N protein and its use as a biotinylated conjugate in a dRIT. Tested against a batch of 107 brain specimens representing a wide phylogenetic diversity of RABV collected from different animal species with multiple geographical origins in China, results showed that the dRIT had 100% specificity (95% CI 0.93-1.00) and 96.49% sensitivity (95% CI 0.88-1.00) as compared with the gold standard FAT. It therefore provides a simple, economical alternative to FAT, particularly for use in rabies diagnosis in developing countries.
Keywords
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Virology
Authors
Ye Feng, Muyang Wang, Tingfang Liu, Yan Zhang, Zhongzhong Tu, Huancheng Guo, Cuijuan Zhang, Renying Zhu, Wenlin Ren, Le Sun, Weidi Xu, Yuyang Wang, Maohua Li, Changchun Tu,