title: The potential role of pigs in the enzootic cycle of rift valley Fever at alexandria governorate, egyp.
abstract: This study was carried out to clarify the possible role of pigs as intermediate host for Rift Valley Fever (RVF) virus through detection of antibodies to RVF in the sera of pigs and human contacts. Two hundreds and forty five of pig blood samples and forty three blood samples of human contacts to the pigs (Veterinarian and their assistants, butchers and Abattoir workers) were collected from pigs' abattoir at Alexandria governorate, Egypt. Blood samples were subjected to the detection of RVF antibodies by both ELISA and HAI techniques. The detection rate of RVF antibodies in pig sera by ELISA was 37 positive (15.1%) out of 245 tested sera samples. The highest detection rate of positive samples was in winter season (12 out of 58, (20.69%) and the lowest detection rate was at summer season (7 out of 70, (10.0%), while it was 9 (15.79%) and 9 (15.0%) positive out of 57 and 60 tested sera samples in spring and autumn seasons respectively with no significant differences between them. When HAI technique was applied to detect the RVF antibodies in pig sera, it gave only 20 positive samples out of 245 (8.16%) with highest detection rate was also in winter 7 (12.07%) while it was only 1 (1.43%) in summer season with significant differences between the results obtained in the summer season and those of autumn and winter seasons. History was taken from all of human contacts to exclude the possibilities of taking neither vaccination nor infection from other sources. The detection rates of antibodies against RVF virus in human contacts were 6 (13.95%) and 3 (6.98%) by ELISA and HAI techniques respectively. Our study does not exclude that, pigs act as a possible intermediate host in the maintenance cycle of RVF virus.
authors.affiliation: Virological Department, Alexandria Provincial Laboratory, Animal Health Research Institute, Agriculture Research Council, Alexandria, Egypt. bahgatzy@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Bahgat Z
authors.initials: BZ
authors.lastname: Youssef