Comparison of two competitive ELISAs for the detection of specific peste-des-petits-ruminant antibodies in sheep and cattle populations

Peste-des-petits-ruminant (PPR) continues to be a major problem of small ruminants in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The closely related paramyxovirus causing rinderpest (RP) has been largely eradicated by a global vaccination campaign. However, PPR screening of large populations has lacked a sufficiently reliable, fast and cheap screening test. This study compares two commercially available PPR antibodies ELISA kits using serum collected from experimental sheep and cattle populations with four different vaccination histories for RP and PPR. The aim was to estimate the levels of cross-reaction between antibodies to the two diseases for each kit and their test parameters in the different populations. There was considerable variation between kits and between the different vaccination groups. There was a clear problem of cross-reaction in both PPR kits with RP positive sera. However, in areas where RP has been eradicated and vaccination stopped both tests could be useful for screening small ruminants for PPR.