DEVELOPMENT AND ASSESSMENT OF A COAGGLUTINATION TEST FOR DETECTING CANINE PARVOVIRUS IN CLINICAL SPECIMENS.

Rapid diagnosis of canine parvovirus (CPV-2) infection is of key importance in management and control of the disease. The present study aims at the development and evaluation of an easy to use rapid test for the detection of canine parvovirus particles in clinical samples collected and tested during daily veterinary practice. For this purpose, the coagglutination test (COA) using Methylene blue stained anti-CPV2 antibodies sensitised staphylococcus aureus ATCC 12598 was performed to detect CPV-2 in 91 clinical samples (86 rectal swabs and 5 organ homogenates) collected between 2011 and 2015 from suspected canine clinical cases received in Moroccan veterinary clinics. The same samples were previously tested by Hemagglutination test and real-time PCR (Amrani et al., 2016), the results were compared and employed in the evaluation of COA. The results of the COA showed 79.12% (72/91) of tested samples to be positive and 20.87% (19/91) to be negative. The intensity of reaction in positive samples was scored high (3+) in 6 samples (6.6%), medium (2+) in 28 samples (30.7%) and low (1+) in 57 samples (62.6%) which occurred within a median time of 3min, 4min and 3min42s, respectively. In comparison with PCR, the COA test demonstrated a good agreement of 80.2 % and a sensitivity of 80%. The coagglutination test is a promising test allowing daily diagnostic of canine parvovirus in field, veterinary clinics and non- equipped laboratories with molecular techniques.