Verification of the active bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) contaminated in bovine live viral vaccines by means of the detection of negative-sense RNA of BVDV with RT-PCR

The reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) developed for the detection of active pestiviruses by amplification of negative strand viral RNA was verified to detect extraneous active bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) in bovine live viral vaccines. The novel method was confirmed to be no less sensitive than the interference method which is Japanese national standard method as reported previously. Moreover, it was also shown that all of the non-cytopathogenic BVDV strains examined in this study were detected by this method. Furthermore, ingredients in bovine live viral vaccines did not interfere with the novel RT-PCR. Twelve batches of bovine live viral vaccines were examined by both methods of Japanese standard and novel RT-PCR if the alternative method could be applied for commercial vaccines for cattle. As expected, the results agreed with previous results obtained using the interference method. We conclude that the novel RT-PCR method is very useful for quality control of bovine live viral vaccines except for bovine viral diarrhea live vaccine.