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Discussion on Research Summary: Neuropathic EHV diagnosis
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Saturday, Nov 10, 2007 - 10:47 am:
Here is a 24 hour test that is very reliable that diagnoses the EHV-1 strain most often responsible for the neurological complications. The problem with reporting these is we never know the availability of the test so if you are interested in finding where this is done, contact the M.H. Gluck Equine Research Center. Contact information is in the summary.
DrO
J Vet Diagn Invest. 2007 Jan;19(1):69-72.
Development of a real-time polymerase chain reaction assay for rapid diagnosis of neuropathogenic strains of equine herpesvirus-1.
Allen GP.
M.H. Gluck Equine Research Center, Department of Veterinary Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546-0099, USA. gallen@uky.edu
This communication reports the development and performance assessment of a rapid diagnostic test for identifying horses actively infected with the neurovirulent pathotype of equine herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1). The test is a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based assay that uses EHV-1 pathotype-specific TaqMan(R) reporter probes for discrimination between neuropathogenic and non-neuropathogenic strains of EHV-1 in equine blood or nasal swabs. The diagnostic performance of the new technique was evaluated by testing specimens collected from 234 horses involved in recent outbreaks of EHV-1 myeloencephalopathy at three separate thoroughbred racetracks and one large riding/boarding stable. Side-by-side comparison of the EHV-1 pathotyping results yielded by the new single-step, PCR-based allelic discrimination technique (24-hour turn-around-time) with those generated by a multi-step, conventional nested PCR followed by nucleotide sequencing of the amplified DNA (4-day turn-around-time) revealed complete agreement between the 2 test methods. The ability to rapidly identify horses infected with neuropathogenic strains of EHV-1 using a single-step, PCR-based method has significant implications for future diagnostic evaluation of suspect animals.
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