Prevalence of Peste Des Petits Ruminants Virus (PPRV) in Mardan, Hangu and Kohat District of Pakistan; Comparative Analysis of PPRV Suspected serum samples using Competitive ELISA (cELISA) and Agar Gel Immunodiffusion (AGID)

Peste des petits Ruminants (PPR) is an acute, febrile, highly contagious and economically important viral disease of small ruminants. However PPR is more prevalent in sheep and goat. Competitive ELISA, Virus neutrilization test, and RT-PCR are the available techniques for diagnosis of PPR which give rapid detection where as Agar gel immunodiffusion and Counter immunoelectrophoresis were previously used for PPR detection. In this study two serological techniques were compared for PPR diagnosis. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the comparative sensitivity of both techniques for PPR detection. For this purpose one hundred and sixty PPR suspected serum samples collected from goats and sheep flocks (unvaccinated) from three Districts of NWFP including Mardan, Hangu and Kohat were analyzed in National Veterinary Laboratories, Islamabad. Out of these 160 samples, fifty (50) were found positive for PPR antibodies with cELISA (Prevalence = 31.25%). The cELISA positive serum samples however gave negative results when tested with AGID although the control well was always positive. Thus it was concluded that cELISA technique is more sensitive and specific than AGID for PPR antibody detection