A Comparative Study of Bovine Leukemia Virus (BLV) Detection Methods

Electron Microscopy (EM), Reverse Transcriptase test (RT), Concurrent Radioimmunoassay (cRIA) for major core protein p-24, and RNA dot-blot hybridization were used for quantitative BLV detection in culture fluids of BLV producing Foetal Lamb Kidney (FLK) cell lines and short term lymphocyte cultures. It was established that for EM studies a probe should contain 5×106 viruses, for the RT test 1×107, for cRIA 1×106 and for RNA dot-blot 5 hybridization 1×105 viruses. The sensitivity of RT and EM methods is limited by the purity of initial material while that of cRIA and RNA dot-blot hybridization are not affected by this factor. We can get quantitative results by all four assays and under standard conditions it is possible to make recalculations between the methods.