S.33. Isolation of pig rotavirus in MA 104 cell line

Piglet diarrhea causes high morbidity and mortality in young pigs, and rotavirus (RV) has been identified as prime cause of the infection. Demonstration of rotavirus is commonly done by EM, PAGE and by ELISA. However, there is limited effort for isolation and characterization of pig RV in India. In the present study isolation of RV was done from diarrheic piglets in MA 104 cell line. A total of 421 diarrheic samples collected from clinically affected piglets were screened for presence of RV by sandwich-ELISA and SDS-PAGE. In sandwich ELISA 24. 94% (105/421) and in SDS-PAGE 17.33% (73/421) were found positive for RV. For isolation of the virus, 18 samples positive in both the tests were processed for isolation RV in MA 104 cell culture. In first 4/5 passages RV recovered from 66.0% (12/18) samples but at the end of 8-passage level 88.8% sampled yielded virus. Interestingly two isolates showed development of CPE on 4^th passage onwards. The propagation of the virus in cell culture could be well detected by ELISA, FAT and PAGE. Isolated pig rotavirus will be the useful materials for characterization and development of vaccine strain.