Highly Sensitive Fetal Goat Tongue Cell Line for Detection and Isolation of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus

Friedrich Loeffler Institute was examined for susceptibility to infection by foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus (FMDV) and by two other viruses causing clinically indistinguishable vesicular conditions, namely, the viruses of swine vesicular disease and vesicular stomatitis. Primary bovine thyroid (BTY) cells are generally the most sensitive cell culture system for FMDV detection but are problematic to produce, particularly for laboratories that infrequently perform FMD diagnostic tests and for those in countries where FMD is endemic that face problems in sourcing thyroid glands from FMD-negative calves. Strains representing all seven serotypes of FMDV could be isolated in ZZ-R 127 cells with a sensitivity that was considerably higher than that of established cell lines and within 0.5 log of that for BTY cells. The ZZ-R 127 cell line was found to be a sensitive, rapid, and convenient tool for the isolation of FMDV and a useful alternative to BTY cells for FMD diagnosis. Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious in-fectious disease of cloven-hoofed animals. Typical clinical signs are vesicles and erosions of cutaneous mucosae and hairless parts of the skin, affecting mainly the mouth and the hoofs. While FMD was effectively eradicated from Europe by 1990, the disease retains its status of having the highest economi