COMPARISON OF ELISA AND IFA FOR ESTIMATION OF ANTIBODY LEVELS OF CATTLE TO THEILERIA ANNULATA VACCINE

Abstract

Bovine tropical Theileriosis caused by Theileria annulata is an economically important disease of cattle. An enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to determine antibody levels in vaccinated and unvaccinated cattle, us¬ing cellular schizont as antigen and its results were compared with immunofluo-rescent assay (IFA). For this test 126 sera collected (105 vaccinated, 31 not vacci¬nated) from cows and assayed with ELISA which among them 104 sera were positive and 32 sera were negative. Same sample assayed with IFA in which 99 were positive sera and 37 were negative sera. Thereby the sensitivity and speci¬ficity of this ELISA on comparsion with IFA were 95.5% and 66.6% respectively. This study revealed that ELISA could be successfully used for both differentiat¬ing vaccinated and not vaccinated cattle and obtaining the titer of vaccinated cattle.