Comparative Performance of Four Serodiagnostic Procedures for Detecting Bovine and Equine Vesicular Stomatitis Virus Antibodies

Vesicular stomatitis (VS) is an epizootic epitheliotropic viral disease occurring only in the Western Hemisphere and affecting principally cattle, sheep, and horses. Recent VS epizootics in the United States have been caused by the New Jersey serotype of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV-NJ). The Indiana 1 serotype of the virus (VSV-IN,) last appeared in this country during the 1964-1966 series of epizootics. Economic losses result from both clinical disease and regulatory barriers imposed upon livestock trade and transport. These barriers arose because VS resembles more serious reportable vesicular diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease in some respects. Timely, accurate VSV serodiagnosis is thus needed for foreign animal disease surveillance and regulatory purposes. Serotype-specific complement fixation (CF) and serum neutralization (SN) procedures have traditionally been used. 1,2 In recent years, competitive and IgM-specific capture enzyme-linked immunoassays (cELISA, mcELISA) have been