RESUMO
Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) and porcine sapelovirus (PSV) are two viruses that can cause diarrhoea in pigs and bring great economic loss to the pig industry. In this research, a duplex real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay based on SYBR Green I was developed to simultaneously detect PDCoV and PSV. No specific melting peaks were found in other porcine diarrhoea-associated viruses, indicating that the method developed in this study had good specificity. The detection limits of PDCoV and PSV were 1.0 × 101 copies µl-1 and 1.0 × 102 copies µl-1, respectively. The duplex real-time qPCR assay tested two hundred and three (203) intestinal and faecal samples collected from diarrhoeal and asymptomatic pigs. The positive rates of PDCoV and PSV were 20.2% and 23.2%, respectively. The co-infection rate of PDCoV and PSV was 13.8%. To evaluate the accuracy of the developed method, conventional PCR and singular TaqMan real-time qPCR assays for PDCoV/PSV were also used to detect the samples. The results showed that the duplex real-time qPCR assay was consistent with the singular assays, but its sensitivity was higher than conventional PCR methods. This duplex real-time qPCR assay provides a rapid, sensitive and reliable method in a clinic to simultaneously detect PDCoV and PSV.