EVALUATION OF ELISA FOR DETECTION OF ANTIBODIES TO CAEV IN MILK

Milk was found to be a suitable alternative specimen for the serologic al diagnosis of caprine arthritis-encephalitis virus (CAEV) using the ELISA. The relative sensitivity and specificity of testing individual milk samples as compared to individual sera was 96.4 and 97.3% respect ively. The overall agreement between the testing of milk and sera was 96.9% and the correlation coefficient between testing sera and milk, 0 .94%. The testing of bulk milk could be used to predict approximately the prevalence of CAEV infection in a dairy goat flock. It was estimat ed that a prevalence of about 1.6% to 7.5% could be detected in the EL ISA when bulk milk samples from two infected goat flocks were tested. Either chilled milk samples or milk samples treated with merthiolate w ere found to be suitable for testing.