Abstract
BackgroundIn the last few decades, Romania has been considered one of the European countries most affected by animal rabies, but a combination of oral rabies vaccination (ORV) campaigns in foxes alongside mandatory vaccination of pets has substantially decreased the number of rabies cases in recent years.The objective of this study was to detect rabies antibodies in wild boar serum and thoracic fluid samples collected during the hunting season after ORV campaigns in north-eastern Romania in order to identify if wild boars are substantial competitors to foxes for ORV baits.ResultsWhen the 312 wild boar samples were tested by ELISA (BioPro ELISA, Czech Republic), 42.31% (132/312) demonstrated rabies antibodies. In order to compare these wild boar results in terms of the percentage of immunisation, fox samples were also included in the study, and in this case only 28.40% (98/345) demonstrated rabies antibodies by ELISA. To check the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of this ELISA, those samples with a sufficient volume from both species that had tested either negative or positive with an initial ELISA were then tested with the Fluorescent Antibody Virus Neutralisation (FAVN) assay. The overall concordance between the BioPro ELISA and FAVN test was 74.26% (75/101) in wild boar samples and 65.66% (65/99) in fox samples, 140 out of 200 samples being correlated with the two methods, although no significant statistical difference (p = 0.218) between the two species was registered. We found a good agreement by both tests for the ELISA-positive samples (91.30%), however the situation was different for the ELISA-negative samples, where a low agreement was demonstrated (41.18%).ConclusionsThis study reports for the first time the presence of rabies antibodies in wild boar samples collected during the hunting season in Romania after ORV campaigns in rabies endemic areas. It is also the first study to demonstrate that ELISA BioPro can be used on wild boar samples with satisfactory results compared to the FAVN test for this species.
Highlights
In the last few decades, Romania has been considered one of the European countries most affected by animal rabies, but a combination of oral rabies vaccination (ORV) campaigns in foxes alongside mandatory vaccination of pets has substantially decreased the number of rabies cases in recent years
The only effective method in controlling the disease in Europe consists of oral rabies vaccination (ORV) through the Dascalu et al BMC Veterinary Research (2019) 15:466 distribution of vaccine baits in the habitat of these two species [7, 8]
Detection of rabies antibodies by Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) In wild boar samples All the tests were validated, with the positive and negative controls values found as expected, according to the criteria given by the manufacturer
Summary
In the last few decades, Romania has been considered one of the European countries most affected by animal rabies, but a combination of oral rabies vaccination (ORV) campaigns in foxes alongside mandatory vaccination of pets has substantially decreased the number of rabies cases in recent years. The only effective method in controlling the disease in Europe consists of oral rabies vaccination (ORV) through the Dascalu et al BMC Veterinary Research (2019) 15:466 distribution of vaccine baits in the habitat of these two species [7, 8]. The development of safe, effective vaccines incorporated into attractive baits led to the first oral vaccination programme targeting foxes. This programme was implemented in 1978 in Switzerland [7]. The Swiss example was followed in 2001 by Belgium, France and Luxembourg [8, 12], other central, western and northern European countries [13,14,15,16,17,18,19]
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