EXPERIMENTAL-INFECTION OF CHICKENS WITH AN ATYPICAL MYCOPLASMA-GALLISEPTICUM STRAIN - COMPARISON OF DIAGNOSTIC METHODS

Fifteen chickens were inoculated with the atypical Mycoplasma gallisep ticum (MG) K703 strain. On different dates post inoculation, tracheal swab samples were collected for mycoplasma culture and blood samples w ere analysed by slide agglutination test (SA) with commercial or homol ogous antigen and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with three different kits. Results showed that MG isolation rate was low on seve ral sampling dates. The SA with commercial antigen did not yield posit ive results, although birds were positive when tested with homologous antigen. With commercial ELISA kits, the numbers of positive samples r emained low. These results illustrate the difficulty of diagnosis of i nfections with such MG variant strains.