Validation of five commercially available ELISAs for the detection of antibodies against infectious bursal disease virus (serotype 1).

In this study, the results are reported from a validation study of five commercially available enzymelinked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) for the detection of antibodies against infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV), serotype 1. The specificity of the ELISAs varied from 63.8 to 100%. All ELISAs reached a sensitivity of 100% on sera between 14 and 21 days post-vaccination (d.p.v.) with two classical vaccines and a Delaware variant-E virus. Overall, most birds became positive between 8 and 11 d.p.v. As expected, the ELISA with the lowest specificity showed the highest sensitivity at 5 d.p.v. When the decrease in maternally derived antibodies against IBDV was measured, a highly significant correlation (P < 0.001) was found for all ELISAs and the virus neutralization test (VNT).