Evaluation of West Nile Virus Diagnostic Capacities in Veterinary Laboratories of the Mediterranean and Black Sea Regions

Evaluation of West Nile Virus Diagnostic Capacities in Veterinary Laboratories of the Mediterranean and Black Sea Regions

The increasing incidence of West Nile virus (WNV) in the Euro-Mediterranean area warrants the implementation of effective surveillance programs in animals. A crucial step in the fight against the disease is the evaluation of the capacity of the veterinary labs to accurately detect the infection in a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Pathogens (Basel) Vol. 9; no. 12; p. 1038
Main Authors: Pérez-Ramírez, Elisa, Cano-Gómez, Cristina, Llorente, Francisco, Vodica, Ani, Veljović, Ljubiša, Toklikishvilli, Natela, Sherifi, Kurtesh, Sghaier, Soufien, Omani, Amel, Kustura, Aida, Krstevski, Kiril, Karayel-Hacioglu, Ilke, Hagag, Naglaa Mohamed, El Hage, Jeanne, Davdyan, Hasmik, Bintarif, Mohd Saddam, Adzic, Bojan, Abouchoaib, Nabil, Jiménez-Clavero, Miguel Ángel, Fernández-Pinero, Jovita
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 11-12-2020
MDPI
Subjects:
Animal populations
Animals
Antibodies
Asymptomatic
Datasets
Diagnostic systems
diagnostics
Epidemics
external quality assessment (EQA)
flavivirus
Immunoglobulin M
Infections
Laboratories
MediLabSecure
Polymerase chain reaction
Quality assessment
Quality control
Serology
Surveillance
Usutu virus (USUV)
Vector-borne diseases
Viruses
West Nile virus
West Nile virus (WNV)
Black Sea
diagnostics
West Nile virus (WNV)
external quality assessment (EQA)
MediLabSecure
PCR
Usutu virus (USUV)
ELISA
flavivirus
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Summary:The increasing incidence of West Nile virus (WNV) in the Euro-Mediterranean area warrants the implementation of effective surveillance programs in animals. A crucial step in the fight against the disease is the evaluation of the capacity of the veterinary labs to accurately detect the infection in animal populations. In this context, the animal virology network of the MediLabSecure project organized an external quality assessment (EQA) to evaluate the WNV molecular and serological diagnostic capacities of beneficiary veterinary labs. Laboratories from 17 Mediterranean and Black Sea countries participated. The results of the triplex real time RT-PCR for simultaneous detection and differentiation of WNV lineage 1 (L1), lineage 2 (L2) and Usutu virus (USUV) were highly satisfactory, especially for L1 and L2, with detection rates of 97.9% and 100%, respectively. For USUV, 75% of the labs reported correct results. More limitations were observed for the generic detection of flaviviruses using conventional reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), since only 46.1% reported correct results in the whole panel. As regards the serological panel, the results were excellent for the generic detection of WNV antibodies. More variability was observed for the specific detection of IgM antibodies with a higher percentage of incorrect results mainly in samples with low titers. This EQA provides a good overview of the WNV (and USUV) diagnostic performance of the involved veterinary labs and demonstrates that the implemented training program was successful in upgrading their diagnostic capacities.
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ISSN:2076-0817
2076-0817
DOI:10.3390/pathogens9121038