Intervet vaccine test

Intervet has developed a test for Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) to indicate virus infection in vaccinated animals. The marker test, combined with modern FMD vaccines, enables authorities to use vaccination in FMD control strategies and avoid massive preventive culling of healthy animals.

Modern FMD vaccines are highly purified and contain only those proteins essential for protection. The non-essential proteins (NSP; non structural proteins) are removed during the purification process and vaccinated animals do not produce antibodies against NSP.

Infected animals produce antibodies against NSP. Hence these vaccines may be used as "marker vaccines". Intervet's fully owned subsidiary Bommeli Diagnostics, Switzerland, in collaboration with the World Reference Laboratory for FMD in Pirbright (U.K.) and the Instituto Zooprofilattico in Brescia (Italy), has developed the ready to use 3ABC marker test.

This ELISA test is not restricted to a certain strain and is reliable for all serotypes of the FMD virus. The test has been validated with standard and other well-described sera from the institutes in Pirbright and Brescia and from the Dutch central veterinary research institute, ID-Lelystad.

In the examinations on these sera, both the specificity and the sensitivity of the test were demonstrated to be more than 99%. The evaluation dossier is now finalized and will be send out to EU Commission and OIE.

Sabine Schueller, DVM, PhD

Communication & Public Affairs
Intervet International bv
Wim de Koerverstraat 35
P.O. Box 31
5830 AA Boxmeer
The Netherlands