Rapid communications Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus seroprevalence in domestic livestock in Saudi Arabia,

In Saudi Arabia, including regions of Riyadh and Al Ahsa, pseudoparticle neutralisation (ppNT) and microneutralisation (MNT) tests detected no antibod-ies to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in sheep (n = 100), goats (n = 45), cattle (n = 50) and chickens (n = 240). Dromedary camels however, had a high prevalence of MERS-CoV antibod-ies. Bovine coronavirus (BCoV) infected sera from cat-tle had no cross-reactivity in MERS-CoV ppNT or MNT, while many dromedary camels ’ sera reacted to both BCoV and MERS-CoV. Some nevertheless displayed specific serologic reaction profiles to MERS-CoV. In a seroepidemiological study of domestic livestock (sheep, goats, cattle, chicken) and dromedary cam-els from Saudi Arabia, we find that only dromedar