Development of a rapid lateral flow immunochromatography assay for the detection of group-specific antibodies against VP7 protein of bluetongue virus in multiple species

Bluetongue virus (BTV), the causative agent of bluetongue disease infects many domestic and wild ruminants. In the present study, colloidal gold nanoparticle-based lateral flow immunochromatography assay (LFIA) was developed to detect the group-specific antibodies to BTV in serum samples of sheep, goats, cattle, and camel. The recombinant VP7 protein of BTV conjugated to colloidal gold nanoparticles (GNPs) was used as a detector reagent. Recombinant streptococcal protein G and monoclonal antibody to BTV group-specific antigen were immobilized as the test and the control line, respectively on a nitrocellulose membrane. The protein G could capture the specific antibodies to BTV present in the serum of multiple ruminant species susceptible to BTV in a common test format and could eliminate the requirement of multiple anti-species antibodies. Upon addition of serum sample, GNP-rVP7 protein-serum complex migrated laterally onto the strip via capillary action and results were analyzed based on appearance of red colour band at test and control line. Serum samples (n = 481) of sheep, goats, cattle, and camel segregated as positive and negative by the commercial competitive-ELISA (c-ELISA) kit were tested in the fabricated LFIA strips to analyze the performance of the assay. In comparison with c-ELISA, the relative diagnostic sensitivity (DSn) of 95.2% with 91.6–97.6 (95%)) confidence interval and relative diagnostic specificity (DSp) of 99.6% 97.8–100.0 (95%) confidence interval were obtained for the optimized LFIA. The agreement between the LFIA and the c-ELISA was excellent as indicated by the kappa coefficient value of 0.949 (SE = 0.0142) with 0.9219 to 0.9779 (95%) confidence interval. The recombinant protein G based LFIA is a sensitive, specific, rapid, one-step test that can be used in the field or poorly equipped laboratories for serological diagnosis and serosurveillance of bluetongue in multiple susceptible species.