Comparison of Agar Gel Immunodiffusion Test, Immunohistochemsitry and Reverse Transcription - Polymerase Chain Reaction for Detection of Infectious Bursal Disease Virus

The objective of this study was to compare agar gel immunodiffusion test (AGID) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) with reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in terms of sensitivity and specificity for the detection of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV). Thirty-five bursal samples collected from filed outbreak of IBD were evaluated by all 3 diagnostic tests. Sensitivity and specificity of both AGIDT and IHC with RT-PCR was 94.12% and 100%, respectively. Both AGIDT and IHC showed a 94.29% association with RT-PCR with a k value of 0.482, indicating a moderate degree of agreement. The Cochran’s Q value was 4.00, which is lower than the critical value, indicating that the methods did not differ significantly (p>0.05) from each other in detection of samples as positive or negative. However, RT-PCR had distinct edge over these two tests employed in the study.