Detection of Peste des Petits Ruminants Virus Antigen in Pneumonic Lungs from Camels at Al Sahafa Slaughterhouse, Khartoum State

Abstract

The present study was conducted to determine the presence and antigenic-prevalence of PPR among camels slaughtered at Al-Sahafa slaughterhouse, Khartoum State, Sudan. During June to December 2019, 78 lung samples, showing pneumonic lesions at post-mortem, were collected from camels from Al-Sahafa slaughterhouse, Khartoum State. Camels slaughtered at Al-Sahafa slaughterhouse were from Darfur and Butana breeds and their ages ranged mostly from 1 to 3 years but also camels up to 7 years old. No obvious apparent clinical signs were observed in camels during ante-mortem. However, many pneumonia lesions and changes in the lung colour and shape were observed during post-mortem. Camel lung samples prepared as 20% lung tissue homogenate were screened for the presence of PPRV antigen using the haemagglutination (HA) test using 1% chicken red blood cells (RBCs) suspension, PBS of pH 6.8 and 4°C for incubating the HA plates in order to achieve highest haemagglutination titres. After 17-18 minutes incubation, results of the HA indicated that 76/78 samples were positive for PPRV antigen with an overall antigenic prevalence of 97.4% and only 2/78 (2.6%) samples were found negative. The HA titres for the positive samples ranged from 2 to 32 haemagglutination units (HAU) with mean titre of 10 HAU. Of note, two samples only showed a very high haemagglutination titre of 32 HAU whereas apparently most of the samples achieved HA titre of 8 HAU. The results showed that PPRV could be detected in pneumonic lungs of camels indicating their role in causing pneumonia in camels. Further studies are needed to investigate whether camels may transmit the virus to other susceptible animal species, or not, and to determine their role in the epidemiology of the disease in the Sudan.