Usefulness of sero-surveillance for Trichinella infections in animal populations

In this paper we evaluate serology as a tool to monitor Trichinella-free pig herds. Indoor, industrial-raised fattening pigs in the Netherlands are practically Trichinella-free, and were used as a negative reference cohort. A positive cohort was not available but we used sera from an endemic region...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Veterinary parasitology 2009-02, Vol.159 (3-4), p.345-349
Main Authors: Teunis, P.F.M., Fonville, M.T.M., Döpfer, D.D.V., Eijck, I.A.J.M., Molina, V., Guarnera, E., van der Giessen, J.W.B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
accuracy
animal parasitic nematodes
Animals
Antibodies, Helminth
Argentina - epidemiology
diagnostic techniques
disease detection
disease surveillance
ELISA
Endemic Diseases - veterinary
enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay
Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay - veterinary
food animals
herds
in vitro digestion
precision
Prevalence
Public health
Sensitivity and Specificity
Sero-surveillance
serodiagnosis
Seroepidemiologic Studies
Serologic Tests - veterinary
Seropositive
Swine
Swine Diseases - blood
Swine Diseases - epidemiology
Swine Diseases - parasitology
test sensitivity
test specificity
Trichinella
Trichinella - immunology
Trichinellosis
Trichinellosis - epidemiology
Trichinellosis - veterinary
trichinosis
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Summary:In this paper we evaluate serology as a tool to monitor Trichinella-free pig herds. Indoor, industrial-raised fattening pigs in the Netherlands are practically Trichinella-free, and were used as a negative reference cohort. A positive cohort was not available but we used sera from an endemic region in Argentina to model a plausible distribution of serological responses (as OD levels) in positive sera, employing the difference between the endemic sera and the negative Dutch sera. We describe a method for correcting for variation among ELISA plates using on-plate reference sera, and demonstrate how to apply these corrections to a collection of test sera from pig farms. The positive and negative reference distributions can be used to estimate fractions true and false positives, necessary for defining appropriate cutoffs to be used for classifying positive and negative animals. Based on this analysis, the serological test was shown to lack the predictive power required for its large scale deployment. The properties of the serological test were also compared to the conventional digestion assay, which is highly specific but considerably less sensitive.
ISSN:0304-4017
1873-2550
DOI:10.1016/j.vetpar.2008.10.071