Oligopeptide-based enzyme immunoassay for ovine lentivirus antibody detection

Ovine progressive pneumonia virus (OPPV) is a lentivirus which causes a progressive disease in sheep. Immunodominant epitopes have been identified in the envelope gp4O glycoprotein. Synthetic peptides representing these regions are able to detect the presence of OPPV antibodies in 96 % of infected sheep. Ovine progressive pneumonia (OPP), also known as maedi virus or ovine lentivirus (OLV) pneumonia, is caused by a nononcogenic, exogenous retrovirus of the Lentiviridae sub-family (3). The disease is characterized by increasing respira-tory distress, chronic weight loss and wasting, and the inevita-ble death of infected sheep (3). The disease has been recognized in most parts of the sheep-producing world and is endemic in the United States. OPP virus (OPPV) carriers are usually identified by detecting anti-OPPV antibodies in serum by the agar gel immunodiffusion (AGID) test (2). However, this test employs a viral antigen that is produced in an inefficient and time-consuming tissue culture system. There