Molecular Diagnosis of Foot and Mouth Disease Virus Infection in Cattle

Foot-and-mouth disease virus is the causitive agent of an acute andhighly contagious febrile vesicular disease affecting cloven-footedanimals. It is considered to be the most economically important diseaseaffecting wild and domesticated animals. Identification of FMDV posedproblems because of the occurrence of seven serotypes, A, 0, C, SATl,SAT2, SAT3 and ASIAl, and many subtypes of the virus. Even thoughdisease caused by different serotypes can be indistinguishable clinicallythere is little to no cross-protection, as animals infected with oneserotype still remain fully susceptible to infection with other serotypes, The vaccination program against the FMDV serotype ”0”, the mostpredominant serotype in Egypt, is applied on animals in SharkiaProvince in 2006 however a severe outbreak of FMD occur withindifferent localities therefore, the present study was submitted to carryouta comparative seroprevalence of different FMDV serotypes’ specificantibodies among animals in Sharkia Province using solid phaseblocking ELISA and the isolation of the local FMDV serotypes on BHKcells with their identification molecularly using RT -PCR.