Sero-Epidemiological Investigation on Peste Des Petits Ruminants in Black Bengal Goats

Clinically, peste des petits ruminants (PPR) is characterized by erosive stomatitis, enteritis with diarrohea and pneumonia. The outbreaks of a rinderpest like disease later confirmed by World Reference Laboratory to be PPR have been occurring in goats since 1993 in Bangladesh and found that the virus has a close relation with the Indian isolates (West Bengal) of PPRV at a cluster with Asian group1. The overall sero-prevalence was 36.00, 49.17 and 19.05% in sheep, goat and cattle respectively in Bangladesh2. Prevalence is higher in indigenous Black Bengal goats than exotic breed like Jamunapari3. Immunosuppression is commonly found in morbillivirus infection and this is thought to contribute susceptibility to secondary infections that accounts for most of the mortality due to PPR infection4. A monoclonal antibody based enzyme immuno slide assay (EISA) has been developed on glass slide for the rapid and accurate detection of PPR virus from excretion and pathological homogenized tissue sample of infected animals5. In this paper a suspected PPR outbreak was studied using EISA technique to further check the suitability of the method using field samples and later confirmed by Competitive ELISA. The epidemiological factors related to disease outbreak were thoroughly investigated to set up a possible control strategy. Materials and Methods Study population The study was carried out in six houses in a village (Napterali) at Mymensingh district with a natural field outbreak suspected to be peste des petits ruminants (PPR) in goats. Apparently healthy goats (n = 38) without vaccination history were also investigated in nearby houses with a distance of 0.5 to 1 kilometres.