Detection of foot-and-mouth disease virus by competitive ELISA using a monoclonal antibody specific for the 12S protein subunit from six of the seven serotypes.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) prevention and control programs are dependent upon rapid, reliable diagnostic procedures. The widely used FMD diagnostic complement fixation (CF) procedures require a specific antiserum for each of the seven FMDV serotypes making the tests both cumbersome and difficult to standardize. An FMD diagnostic, monoclonal antibody based inhibition-ELISA procedure was developed. The test uses a single monoclonal antibody (MAb) that reacts with all European and South American FMDV isolates examined. The procedure detects a highly conserved epitope on the 12S protein subunit of FMDV which appears to be common to all FMDV's with the exception of the South African Territories 2 serotype. The results indicate that the sensitivity of this test is greater than CF and approaches that of virus isolation.