Canine Herpesvirus Seroprevalence and Associated Factors in Dogs of Mexico

Canine herpesvirus (CHV-1) causes disease associated with high mortality in infect-ed puppies, which represents large financial losses for dog breeders. Since CHV-1 at the time of the study he had not been reported in Mexico, the main objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of antibodies against CHV-1 in canine kennels in the metropolitan area of Mexico City. A commercial enzyme-linked immuno-sorbent assay (ELISA) was used, and the results were compared to those of a viral neutralization test. The ELISA kit uses the complete viral particle as the antigen. The plaque reduction neutralization test was combined with the immunoperoxidase technique because of the low cytopathic effect of CHV-1. Neutralizing antibodies were also detected in 20 randomly selected samples. The prevalence of CHV-1 with ELISA was 87%. The concordance between ELISA and serum neutralization (SN) was 0.1129, the sensitivity of the ELISA against SN was 1.0 (100%), the positive predic-tive value was 0.39 (39%), and the negative predictive value was 1 (100%). These results show that ELISA is useful for monitoring the dog population for CHV-1;a positive test result requires confirmation with an SN test, and a negative ELISA result indicates a high probability of being SN-negative. The only variables that were sta-tistically associated with CHV-1 prevalence were breed and kennel. A statistically significant relationship between the degree of ELISA and SN titer was obtained, with a confidence level of 95%. None of the clinical presentation factors was statistically significant. These results suggest that most of the canine population studied in Mex-ico is in a herpesvirus latency state.