Control of classical swine fever by molecular diagnosis and epidemiology

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 96.0312

Key words (English)

Classical swine fever virus; molecular epidemiology; diagnosis; RT-PCR; evolution

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: FAIR1-CT95-00707

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 4. Frame Research Programme - 4.3 Biomedical/Health research

Short description (English)

See abstract

Further information (English)

Full name of research-institution/enterprise:
Bundesamt für Veterinärwesen BVET
Institut für Viruskrankheiten u. Immunprophylaxe IVI

Partners and International Organizations (English)

The Veterinary Laboratories Agency, Addlestone, GB (Co-ordinator), The National Veterinary Institute, Uppsala (S), Nationaal Instituut Voor Diergeneeskundig Onderzoek, Brussel (B), Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperinientale Dell'Umbria e Delle Marche, Perugia (I), Hannover Veterinary School, Hannover (D), The National Veterinary Research Institute, Pulawy (P), Institute of Virology and Immunoprophylaxis, Mittelhäusern (CH)

Abstract (English)

The project which is being carried out by seven participating partners aims to improve the diagnosis of classical swine fever and our ability to trace the spread of the disease. The objectives of the project are: i) to develop novel techniques for swine fever diagnostics that will be superior to existing methods because of enhanced specificity and sensitivity and ability to handle large numbers of tests rapidly; ii) to establish molecular epidemiology as a forensic tool for tracing the origin and spread of new outbreaks of classical swine fever; iii) to speed up the introduction of molecular techniques into routine use by co-ordination of effort and joint validation of methods.
During the third project year work carried out in the partner laboratories was mainly focussing on the further improvement of RT-PCR for virus detection from clinical samples, and on the standardization of this method in order to come up with the most suitable, broadly applicable RT-PCR procedure which can be successfully employed in any laboratory dealing with classical swine fever virus diagnosis. Two consecutive comparative tests were carried out. The first one was focussing on the comparison of the different methods used in the individual laboratories. Two promising methods w
ere then chosen to assess their suitability in different laboratories. It was found that whereas the selected RT-PCR was superior to other virus detection methods both in terms of sensitivity and specificity, it is prone to contamination leading to false positive results. Hence, it was concluded that a high number of negative controls (ratio of number of negative controls to number of samples should be >l!) must be included in order to obtain faithful positive results.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 96.0312