Comparative evaluation of antibody positive titer by ELISA and IFA in Theileria annulata vaccinated cattle in Iran.

ABSTRACT

An enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to evaluate antibody positive titer in vaccinated and non-vaccinated cattle using schizont infected myeloid cells as an antigen. The result was compared with indirect fluorescent antibody level in the same animals. For this study 116 milking cows, 95 vaccinated and 21 non-vaccinated, were bleeded in order to prepare sera. They were tested with both ELISA and IFA tests. 94 sera had positive antibody titer and 22 sera were negative through ELISA test but, with IFA test, only 89 sera showed positive antibody titer and 27 were negative. Thereby, it was concluded that the sensitivity and specificity of ELISA test in comparison with IFA test was 95.5% and 66.6% respectively. This study generally indicated that ELISA could be an effective test for sero-epidemiological investigations of bovine tropical theileriosis, and it is considered to be valid as an additional test to distinguish the vaccinated from the non vaccinated cattle in order to schedule vaccination programs.