title: Chicken anaemia virus antibody ELISA: problems with non-specific reactions.
abstract: For accreditation of CSIRO specific pathogen-free flocks, chicken sera are routinely tested for antibody to chicken anaemia virus (CAV) using a commercially available ELISA kit. On some occasions recently, up to 18.2% positive reactions have been found in individual isolators, with an overall reaction rate of 2.7%. On subsequent bleeding the majority of the suspected birds have given negative reactions, indicating that the earlier reactions were false-positives. The protein composition of the sera that appeared CAV-negative or -positive in the ELISA were compared using various Chromatographic techniques. Separation of serum proteins by high resolution size exclusion chromatography revealed that in the false-positive sera the antigen-binding activity is associated with a protein fraction which was different from that found in the true-positive sera.
authors.affiliation: CSIRO Division of Animal Health, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: W P
authors.initials: WP
authors.lastname: Michalski
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: O'Rourke
authors.forename: T J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Bagust