detection and differentiation of wild-type and vaccine strains of canine distemper virus by a duplex reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction

canine distemper virus (cdv) is the cause of canine distemper (cd) which is a severe and highly contagious disease in dogs. in the present study, a duplex reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) method was developed for the detection and differentiation of wild-type and vaccine strains of cdv. four primers were designed to detect and discriminate the two viruses by generating 638- and 781-bp cdna products, respectively. furthermore, the duplex rt-pcr method was used to detect 67 field samples suspected of cd from guangdong province in china. results showed that, 33 samples were to be wild-type-like. the duplex rt-pcr method exhibited high specificity and sensitivity which could be used to effectively detect and differentiate wild-type and vaccine cdv, indicating its use for clinical detection and epidemiological surveillance.