STUDY ON THE PREVALENCE AND DIAGNOSIS OF CANINE PARVOVIRUS IN HIMACHAL PRADESH

Diarrhoea is one of the most common clinical conditions seen in dogs caused by a variety of different etiological agents. Among common causative agents, Canine Parvovirus remains the most common cause of hemorrhagic diarrhea along with vomiting and is often accompanied by high mortality among susceptible dogs. Due to emerging strains, detection of CPV has become more challenging. Thus, a combination of molecular and immunological techniques offers a higher probability of correctly diagnosing the disease. With this objective, the study was done to detect different antigenic variants of CPV in dogs of Himachal Pradesh. A total of 238 clinical samples from affected dogs like feacal samples, urine samples and necropsied tissue samples were collected from different parts of Himachal Pradesh and processed in the laboratory. For molecular detection, the DNA of all the 238 samples were initially extracted and subjected to PCR amplification using primer pairs CPV-2, CPV-2ab, CPV-2b and CPV-2c targeting the VP2 gene. For immunological detection, all the samples were initially screened for HA activity using 1% washed pig erythrocytes. Samples showing positive HA activity were then serologically tested by HI and Dot ELISA using hyper- immune sera raised in rabbits. A total of 109 samples out of 238 (45.8 %) were found positive for CPV in PCR assay. No sample was found positive for the original CPV-2 strain, CPV-2a and CPV-2c strains out of variant. In HA test, 89 out of 238 (37.39 %) samples showed positive HA titres ranging from 1:2 to 1:2048. that were then confirmed using HI test with similar results. However, 91 out of 238 (38.23 %)samples showed positive results in Dot ELISA with formation of distinct brown-coloured spots on nitrocellulose membrane.