Rapid Detection of Bovine Herpes Virus Type 1 (BOHV-1) in Egyptian Dromedary Camels

Bovine herpesvirus 1 (BoHV-1) is known to cause reproductive disorders in Sudanese camels. Egypt imports about 90% of its camels from Sudan, and the rest from Somalia. The BoHV1 is a viral disease of bovines that can be transmitted to camel, sheep, and goat. Due to the absence of anti-camel conjugated with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) in the market, we used protein-A conjugated with FITC which binds to the Fc region of IgG of many animal species. We, therefore, prepared rabbit anti-camel IgG conjugated with FITC and compared it with protein-A conjugated with FITC to the specificity and sensitivity of these compounds in IBR detection from 35 nasal swaps in imported Egyptian dromedary camels. The sensitivity and specificity of the prepared anti-camel IgG FITC and protein-A FITC were compared using Virus Neutralization Test. The labeled protein concentration in the prepared anti-camel conjugate was 2 mg/ml which was considered as an acceptable value. The degree of labeled protein (DOL) was 5.74 cm–1M–1 and optimal DOL usually fell between 2 and 10. The titer of the prepared anti-camel IgG-FITC was 3,125. The prepared anticamel IgG–FITC and protein-A-FITC showed a sensitivity of 93.75 and 90.9%, and a specificity of 71.43% and 62.5%, respectively. Our findings show no significant difference between protein-A conjugated FITC and prepared anti-camel IgG-conjugated FITC in the rapid diagnosis of BoHV-1 in Egyptian dromedary camels.