Bacteria were concentrated 500-fold from 20-liter water samples collected from 67 different lakes and rivers in the United States. The data suggest that Legionella pneumophila is part of the natural aquatic environment and that the bacterium is capable of surviving extreme ranges of environmental conditions. The data further demonstrate the effectiveness of the direct fluorescent-antibody technique for detecting L. pneumophila in natural aquatic systems. Smears of the concentrated samples were screened microscopically for serogroups of L. pneumophila by the direct fluorescent-antibody technique. Virtually all of the 793 samples were found to be positive by this method. The 318 samples containing the largest numbers of positive bacteria which were morphologically consistent with L. pneumophila were injected into guinea pigs for attempted isolations. Isolates were obtained from habitats with a wide range ofphysical, chemical, and biological parameters. Samples collected monthly from a thermally altered lake and injected into guinea pigs demonstrated a seasonality of infection, with the highest frequency of infection occurring during the summer months.

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An indirect ELISA was developed to detect antibodies specific for capripoxviruses in goat, sheep and cattle sera. Heat-inactivated Nigerian sheeppox virus was used as the ELISA antigen. Sera obtained from sheep and goats that were experimentally infected with different capripoxvirus isolates were used to develop and evaluate the sensitivity of the ELISA. Virus neutralization indexes were determined for the experimental sera in OA3.Ts cells. The specificity of the ELISA was determined using 231 sera from capripoxvirus naïve sheep and goats from Canada. In addition, the ELISA was tested for cross-reactivity to anti-orf virus antibodies using orf-reactive sera and no cross-reactivity was observed. Using experimentally generated sera obtained from animals infected with virulent sheeppox or goatpox virus isolates, the diagnostic sensitivity of the ELISA was 96% with a diagnostic specificity of 95%, where the diagnostic sensitivity of the virus neutralization assay was 96% with a diagnostic specificity of 100%. Further evaluation of this ELISA, using 276 cattle serum samples that were positive by virus neutralization assays, revealed a diagnostic sensitivity of 88% with a specificity of 97%. These results indicated that the inactivated capripoxvirus ELISA can detect capripoxvirus-specific antibodies in sheep, goats and cattle that have been infected with virulent capripoxvirus isolates. Non-virulent capripoxvirus isolates, in contrast, did not elicit positive (>or=1.5 Log10 neutralization index) antibody responses.

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Antibodies to influenza virus in sera from 40 patients infected with influenza A/USSR/90/77H1N1-like virus were measured by an enzyme immunoassay (EIA), and results were compared with those obtained by complement-fixation (CF) and hemagglutination-inhibition (HAI) tests. The sensitivity of EIA in detecting an increase in influenza antibody in sera from these 40 patients was intermediate (27 of 40) between the CF test (19 of 40) and the HAI test (35 of 40) when an ether-treater influenza A/USSR/77 virus was used as antigen in all three tests. In contrast with results from HAI tests, however, EIA did not reliably distinguish between infections caused by H1N1 and H3N2 viruses; EIA was thus most comparable in specificity to the CF test. It appears, therefore, that both EIA and CF tests measure antibodies directed to internal antigens common to all type A influenza strains, and that EIA with whole or ether-split influenza virus antigen may be a feasible alternative to the CF test for the type-specific serodiagnosis of influenza infections.

The laboratory diagnosis of African horse sickness (AHS) is important for: (a) demonstrating freedom from infection in a population, animals or products for trade (b) assessing the efficiency of eradication policies; (c) laboratory confirmation of clinical diagnosis; (d) estimating the prevalence of AHS infection; and (e) assessing postvaccination immune status of individual animals or populations. Although serological techniques play a secondary role in the confirmation of clinical cases, their use is very important for all the other purposes due to their high throughput, ease of use and good cost-benefit ratio. The main objective of this study was to support the validation of AHS VP7 Blocking ELISA up to the Stage 3 of the World Animal Health Organization (OIE) assay validation pathway. To achieve this, a collaborative ring trial, which included all OIE Reference Laboratories and other AHS-specialist diagnostic centres, was conducted in order to assess the diagnostic performance characteristics of the VP7 Blocking ELISA. In this trial, a panel of sera of different epidemiological origin and infection status was used. Through this comprehensive evaluation we can conclude that the VP7 Blocking ELISA satisfies the OIE requirements of reproducibility. The VP7 Blocking ELISA, in its commercial version is ready to enter Stage 4 of the validation pathway (Programme Implementation). Specifically, this will require testing the diagnostic performance of the assay using contemporary serum samples collected during control campaigns in endemic countries.