Diagnóstico da Anemia Infecciosa Eqüina: análise comparativa de sistemas comerciais de diagnóstico por imunodifusão

Abstract

Brazil has currently the second bigger flock of equines of the world and the brazilian equines breeding plays an important role in the development of the sector of agribusiness. Among the infectious disease that affect the national equines breeding, the Equine infectious anemia (EIAV) has been shown of difficult control. The Equine infectious anemia is caused by a retrovirus, it has a worldwide distribution, and it is recognized as the most important disease of equines. The most common clinical signals in the acute phase, are anemia followed of jaundice in the mucosae, ventral oedema, mioglobinury, caquexy and, mainly, intermittent fever. Once it has no treatment, Ministry of Agriculture, Cattle and Supplying determines, through legal mechanisms, a politics of obligatory examination in credentialed laboratories, for the transport and commercialization of equines in the country. The examination is based on the test of Coggins, an immunodiffusion in agar gel (IDGA) of the serum of the animal tested against antigen of the EIAV. As the infection is lifetime, positive animals are euthanasiated by Veterinarians of the Ministry of Agriculture. Considering that precision of the results is critical, once that false positives animals could uselessly be sacrificed, and false negatives will be preserved as infection source, diverse problems may occur, appeared the interest of a systematic analysis of the reproducibility of kits and on possible sources of error. For this purpose, positive and negative sera, referred by the repetition of the tests for Coggins and ELISA, had been evaluated by IDGA comparatively with three kits of different manufacturers. In the experiments of reproducibility, it observed a great distinction in the quality of the precipitation line promoted for the positive sera in the tests. This phenomenon may be justified by the use of the conditions techniques legal, determined for would carry of the Ministry of Agriculture that is distinct of the recommendation of the analyzed manufacturers of two of kits. Exactly thus, the evaluation of the reproducibility of the results of kits with the referred sera showed high correlation.