Seroepidemiological study of African horse sickness virus in The Gambia

An indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used for the screening of horse sera from The Gambia for antibodies against African horse sickness virus (AHSV). The AHSV antigen used for coating was semipurified according to the method of Manning and Chen (Curr. Microbiol. 4:381, 1980); control mock-infected Vero cell antigen was treated in the same manner. A total of 459 horse serum samples were assayed at a single dilution (1:10), and their reactivities were compared with those of reference positive anti-AHSV and reference negative horse sera. A total of 81% of the horse serum samples clearly contained antibodies against AHSV; this consisted of 18% (of the total number of serum samples) strongly positive, 46.5% moderately positive, and 16.5% weakly but still clearly positive. Such results suggest a high prevalence of AHSV in the regions from whence the samples originated. Reports from investigations in other countries in this area of West Africa have also shown a high prevalence for anti-AHSV antibodies in equids. The question is raised as to how the animals became seropositive and whether the observations represent an increased resistance of horses living in a region in which AHS is enzootic.