Microarray-based detection of viruses causing vesicular or vesicular-like lesions in livestock animals

Definitive diagnosis of vesicular or vesicular-like lesions in livestock animals presents challenges both for veterinary clinicians and diagnostic laboratories. It is often impossible to diagnose the causative disease agent on a clinical basis alone and difficult to collect ample vesicular epithelium samples. Due to restrictions of time and sample size, once laboratory tests have ruled out foot-and-mouth disease, vesicular stomatitis and swine vesicular disease a definitive diagnosis may remain elusive. With the ability to test a small quantity of sample for a large number of pathogens simultaneously, DNA microarrays represent a potential solution to this problem. This study describes the application of a long oligonucleotide microarray assay to the identification of viruses known to cause vesicular or vesicular-like lesions in livestock animals. Eighteen virus isolates from cell culture were successfully identified to genus level, including representatives of each foot-and-mouth disease virus serotype, two species of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), swine vesicular disease virus, vesicular exanthema of swine virus (VESV), bovine herpesvirus 1, orf virus, pseudocowpox virus, bluetongue virus serotype 1 and bovine viral diarrhoea virus 1. VSV and VESV were also identified in vesicular epithelium samples, with varying levels of sensitivity. The results indicate that with further development this microarray assay could be a valuable tool for the diagnosis of vesicular and vesicular-like diseases.