Performance of the currently available DIVA real‐time PCR assays in classical and recombinant lumpy skin disease viruses

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Abstract
The use of live homologous vaccines to protect against lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV) infection requires the use of molecular tools to differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals (DIVA). In this study, the commercial real‐time PCR assays; ID Gene™ LSD DIVA Triplex kit and Bio‐T kit® LSD – DIVA, as well as published assays targeting the GPCR gene (Agianniotaki et al, 2017) and ORF008 and ORF126 (Sprygin et al, 2019) were evaluated. These assays correctly identified classical field isolates (European lineage) and vaccine (Neethling vaccine). In contrast, when tested using vaccine‐like recombinant viruses the commercial and published assays were not able to correctly identify recombinant isolates. At the same time the recombinant viruses were detected as either field and/or vaccine, or not detected at all depending on the assay. The different gene sequences present in recombinant viruses cause these DIVA assays to incorrectly assign recombinant viruses as either a field or vaccine virus. This observation has implications for using these assays and for identification of LSDV vaccine.

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