The Monitoring of Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia Control Programmes in Africa using enzyme immunoassays

Objective:

To assist the national veterinary laboratories in the diagnosis of CBPP and in the monitoring of the national and regional CBPP control programmes.

Activities:

Ten Research Contract Holders from ten African countries are involved in this Co-ordinated Research Project. It is supported through three Research Agreement Holders from three European institutes involved in the research on CBPP. The first Research Co-ordination Meeting was held in February, 1998 in Abidjan Côte d’Ivoire. The main activities of the CRP are:

• To establish the monoclonal antibody-based ELISA for the detection of antibodies to CBPP to improve the national capabilities for the diagnosis of CBPP.
• To validate the ELISA at the national level and to obtain further information on its specificity and sensitivity.
• To monitor national CBPP control programmes and thus to assist the Director of Veterinary Services in the management of the programmes. In countries, where active PARC programmes exist, these activities will be closely integrated into the epidemio-surveillance of rinderpest.
• To link participating countries to regional reference laboratories where PCR technology has been established for obtaining a confirmatory or differential diagnosis in the case of suspected outbreaks.

Activity 3, the monitoring of the national control programmes will only start when the results of the field validation of the ELISA become available.

The commonly used complement fixation test (CFT) for antibody detection is specific (although in some herds it shows high numbers of false positives) but lacks the required sensitivity in chronic carriers. Other tests used for antibody detection are unreliable (slide agglutination test, IHAT). The serological response to vaccination detectable by the CFT is inconsistent and short-lived. An indirect ELISA with a high sensitivity cross-reacts with other Mycoplasma strains and thus has poor specificity. The monoclonal antibody-based competitive ELISA, which is validated in this CRP, has many advantages compared to the indirect test, in particular with regard to specificity since vaccinated animals remain in the assay negative. Preliminary results show also an equal sensitivity to the CFT.

Participants:

[Download pdf]

Reports:

• Report of the first RCM, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 1998.
• Manual of the FAO/IAEA competitive ELISA for the detection of antibodies to Mycoplasma mycoides subs. mycoides SC.
• Report of the Final Research Co-ordination Meeting, 18- 21 February 2003, Bamako, Mali.
  • Summary. [Download pdf]
  • Conclusions and Recommendations. [Download pdf]

Project Officer:

H. Makkar