Journal of Animal Research

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) remains one of the most economically devastating menace in livestock due to its highly contagious nature with multispecies involvement. In the present study, a serological survey to detect antibodies against structural and non-structural protein (NSP) of FMD virus (FMDV) in elephants was conducted. A total of 255 elephant serum samples from 5 different states of India were collected with due permission from the competent authorities. A competitive ELISA using commercial kit PrioCHECK^® FMDV NS (Prionics AG, Switzerland) was performed to assess antibodies against FMDV 3ABC non-tructural protein. A total of 2.74% (7/255) animals were found positive indicating their previous exposure to FMDV. The serum samples were also subjected to in-house liquid phase blocking ELISA to assess the level of protective antibody against FMDV serotypes O, A and Asia 1, where none of the animals was found to have protective antibody (log₁₀ titre of ≥1.8) against all three serotype strains used in the vaccine formulation. In conclusion, the study gathered a low level of serological evidence of virus activity as well as lack of protective antibody against FMDV in the sampled elephants. Further investigations into the dynamics of anti-FMDV antibodies supplemented with virological examination should be carried out to understand the virus ecology and disease epidemiology. In order to establish absolute freedom from infection, oesophageal-pharyngeal fluid collected from the NSP-positive animals could further be examined for the presence of viral genome by polymerase chain reaction or for virus isolation to understand the carrier status in this species.