Immunochromatographic strip assay development for avian influenza antibody detection

To detect antibody on pen-side is a rapid way to know the avian influenza (AI) infectious status in a chicken flock. The purpose of this study was to develop an immunochromatographic strip (ICS) assay to detect the antibody against the AI virus (AIV) for field applications. The ICS was constructed by fixing an AIV strain A/chicken/Taiwan/2838V/2000 (H6N1) onto a nitrocellulose membrane as the antigen at the test line and goat anti-rabbit IgG antibody at the control line. The colloidal gold conjugated with rabbit anti-chicken IgG was used as the tracer. The present ICS was used to detect antibodies against avian influenza virus in 326 chicken serum samples from the field. Compared with HI, this ICS could detect antibodies against H5 and H6 AIVs. The hemagglutination inhibition (HI) test was used as the standard to evaluate the ICS accuracy. The results showed that the sensitivity and specificity of this ICS reached 95.2% (159/167) and 94.3% (150/159), respectively. The Kappa value of the HI and ICS was 0.896 (P < 0.001). In conclusion, this ICS could be used as a rapid test to detect antibodies against AIVs in the field.