Abstract
In order to establish and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to ILTV, field virus strain of ILTV was propagated in chorioallantoic membrane of the embryonated eggs. purified and used as antigen. The antisera selected from the field samples and immunized chickens based on serum neutralization test were used as the standard positive and negative sera in all tests. It was found that optimal antigen concentration was $2{\mu}g$ of protein per well and a 1 : 100 dilution of standard serum showed low background optical density with negative serum and high P/N values of positive sera. A 1 : 500 dilution of the rabbit anti-chicken IgG peroxidase conjugate produced a high P/N values and thirty minutes was chosen as suitable time to read the optical density of the enzyme substrate reaction and optical density was consistent during the 16 hours after stopper was treated. When coated antigen was kept on microplate for varying time up to 16 hours at $4^{\circ}C$ or $37^{\circ}C,$ no significant difference was observed between the treatment. The coated antigen could be kept without change of antigenicity for at least one month at $-70^{\circ}C,\; -20^{\circ}C,\; 4^{\circ}C$ and room temperature. When blocking buffer contanining bovine serum albumin was mixed directly with conjugate and serum at 10% level induced higher P/N values compared to blocking antigen coated microplate with the same blocking buffer. The coefficience of correlation between ELISA and SN test was 0.577. When antibody response of chickens, vaccinated with ILTV, was examined by ELISA and SN test, antibody rising and decay pattern between the two test was similar until 11 weeks of age. However 12 weeks onward antibody titer checked on by SN test was slightly lower than that tested by ELISA.
