Equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) is a retrovirus that causes a chronic infection in horses. In the absence of a vaccine, the control of this disease depends on the diagnosis and elimination of infected horses. Currently approved diagnostic procedures utilize agargel diffusion (AGID), or enzyme-linked immunosorbant (ELISA) methodologies to detect antibodies against the virus in horse sera as evidence of infection. Although the AGID procedure has been the industry standard, it is inherently less sensitive, much slower, and subject to considerable variation in interpretation, when compared to ELISA methods. Current ELISA methods utilize either a direct sandwich procedure based on a synthetic peptide corresponding to a region of the small envelope glycoprotein, or an antibody competition format utilizing monoclonal antibodies directed against the major core protein (p-26) of the virus. In either case, a single antigen is used. The major problem with the current ELISA assays is the observation that each misses some positive samples. In addition, the competition ELISA is prone to false positives. This project is aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of combining recombinant protein methodology, synthetic peptides, and a novel conjugation procedure to make a rapid, sensitive, and specific diagnostic test for this important viral pathogen of horses.Applications:Successful development of this assay would provide a rapid and accurate test for the EIA virus. This would allow the elimination of infected horses, which would, in turn, facilitate the control of this disease. The economic consequences of the failure to diagnose infected animals, as well as the destruction of incorrectly diagnosed animals would be avoided.
