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Seroepidemiology for MERS coronavirus using microneutralisation and pseudoparticle virus neutralisation assays reveal a high prevalence of antibody in dromedary camels in Egypt, June 2013
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posted on 2016-02-13, 04:14 authored by R A Perera, P Wang, M R Gomaa, R El-Shesheny, A Kandeil, O Bagato, L Y Siu, M M Shehata, A S Kayed, Y Moatasim, etalWe describe a novel spike pseudoparticle neutralisation
assay (ppNT) for seroepidemiological studies on
Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERSCoV)
and apply this assay together with conventional
microneutralisation (MN) tests to investigate 1,343
human and 625 animal sera. The sera were collected
in Egypt as a region adjacent to areas where MERS has
been described, and in Hong Kong, China as a control
region. Sera from dromedary camels had a high prevalence
of antibody reactive to MERS-CoV by MERS NT
(93.6%) and MERS ppNT (98.2%) assay. The antibody
titres ranged up to 1,280 and higher in MN assays
and 10,240 and higher in ppNT assays. No other
investigated species had any antibody reactivity to
MERS-CoV. While seropositivity does not exclude the
possibility of infection with a closely related virus, our
data highlight the need to attempt detection of MERSCoV
or related coronaviruses in dromedary camels. The
data show excellent correlation between the conventional
MN assay and the novel ppNT assay. The newly
developed ppNT assay does not require Biosafety Level
3 containment and is thus a relatively high-throughput
assay, well suited for large-scale seroepidemiology
studies which are needed to better understand the
ecology and epidemiology of MERS-CoV.
