Serosurvillence Of Foot And Mouth Disease Virus In Shrakia Province

Foot and mouth disease virus (FM DV) is a highly contagious viralinfection of wild and domesticated cloven-hoofed animals. It is the mosteconomically important veterinary pathogen due to its highly infectiousnature, ability to cause persistent infections and long term effects on thecondition and productivity of the many animal species it affects.Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate theseroprevalence ofFMDV antibodies among cattle, buffalo, sheep andgoat herds in Sharkia Province using ELlSA and SNT; in addition to thedifferentiation between infected and vaccinated cattle using 3ABC-ELISA test.In the present study, a total of 1437 serum samples were collectedfrom different species of apparently healthy farm animals (601 cattle, 491buffaloes, 267 sheep and 78 goats) of varying age and sex, from differentlocalities of Sharkia Province. The serum samples were screened for thepresence ofFMDV-specific antibodies using ELISA and SNT.The ELISA results proved ’the presence of specific antibodies toFMDV in 418 out of601 tested cattle serum samples (69.5 %), in 198 outof 491 tested buffalo serum samples (40.3 %), in 125 out of267 testedsheep serum samples (46.8 %) and in 25 out of 78 tested goat serumsamples (32.05 %). While the SNT results proved the presence ofneutralizing antibodies to FMDV in 310 out of 601 tested cattle serumsamples (51.58%), in 150 out of 491 tested buffalo serum samples (30.5%), in 98 out of 267 tested sheep serum samples (36.7 %) and in 20 out of78 tested goat serum samples (25.6 %). Because the history ofvaccination against FMDV is unknown, the detected antibodies may bedue to field infection or vaccination.I n order to differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals, atotal of 350 serum samples randomly selected from seropositive animals