Systematic Veterinary Virology

LABORATORY DIAGNOSIS

• Isolation and identification: Rarely attempted since it is of no practical value. Blood samples should be collected to confirm the diagnosis using the Coggins (agar gel diffusion) test or the more recent ELISA test. Isolation of the virus from suspect horses may be made by inoculating their blood on to leukocyte cultures prepared from horses free of infection. Virus production in cultures can be confirmed by detection of specific EIA antigen by ELISA, or imunofluorescence assay.
• Nucleic acid identification method: Recently a RT-PCR method has been developed to detect EIA proviral DNA from the peripheral blood of horses