Broilers were spray-vaccinated (n=150) with H120 serotype at one-day-old, challenged after 28 days with M41 IBV serotype and after bled at day 28, 34 and 46 after challenged. The respective sera were tested by the indirect ELISA (I-ELISA), sandwich ELISA (S-ELISA), liquid phase blocking ELISA (LPB-ELISA) and the standard serum neutralization test (SNT). For this purpose, a total of 300 sera samples, 150 from non vaccinated and 150 from vaccinated broilers were titrated by all the serological methods and the correlation coefficients were determined. The correlation values (r) between LPB-ELISA x SNT, S-ELISA x SNT, I-ELISA x SNT found werer = 0.98, r = 0.79, and r = 0.74, respectively. Nevertheless, the r between LPB-ELISA x S-ELISA, LPB-ELISA x I-ELISA and S-ELISA x I-ELISA were r = 0.75, r = 0.69 and r = 0.79. In fact , the I-ELISA and the S-ELISA had almost the same correlation with S-ELISA and LPB-ELISA, in contrast with the I-ELISA and LPB-ELISA. It was concluded that LPB-ELISA showed better sensitivity than I-ELISA and S-ELISA, also after 46 days challenge with the heterologous serotype. However, these two last techniques demonstrated similar specificity when the titers were compared with those obtained in SNT, even though after the heterologous serotype challenge the SNT produced better results. This study demonstrated the close relationship between LPB-ELISA and SNT assays.
ELISA; post vaccinal response; infectious bronchitis virus; broilers
