Division 2 ELISA for antigen detection

Viral antigen is detected by using various ELISA techniques. The sensitivity of the antigen ELISA should be high enough to score a positive result from animals showing clinical signs of classical swine fever.

The use of ELISA for antigen detection is recommended on samples from animals with clinical signs or pathological lesions of disease. It is not suitable for the investigation of individual animals. Suitable samples are leukocytes, serum, non-coagulated blood as well as suspensions of the organs referred to in subparagraph 1 taken from pigs suspected of being infected with classical swine fever virus^f1.

The ELISA can be carried out within one day and can be performed by automatic equipment. The most important advantage is that large numbers of samples can be processed in a short period of time. It is recommended that ELISA antigen which give satisfactory results on reference material are used. However, at present all commercial ELISA are less sensitive than the virus isolation on cell culture and their sensitivity is significantly better on blood samples from piglets than from adult pigs.