Immunological Approaches for Diagnosis and Control of Viral Diseases of Sheep and Goats

Small ruminants play a significant role in the livelihood and economy of landless, small and marginal farmers in rural areas of the developing and under-developed country. Productivity of small ruminants is affected by many infectious and non-infectious diseases. Main infectious viral diseases include peste des petits ruminants (PPR), bluetongue (BT), capripox, contagious ecthyma, foot and mouth disease (FMD) and other viral diseases. Diagnostic approaches along with efficacious vaccines are of primary importance in disease diagnosis, control and eradication from any country. Conventional and molecular diagnostics including nucleic acid based assays can be used in rapid detection or diagnosis of causal agents and also in clinical surveillance of the diseases. However, immuno-diagnostic approaches including immunoprecipitation, agglutination tests, different format of Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and field chromatographic tests are considered as significant due to their applications in seromonitoring of vaccinated animals and serosurveillance of infected species. Seroepidemiology including seromonitoring and surveillance of livestock species like sheep and goats are useful in different phases of control and eradication process during the control programme of these dreadful viral diseases. In this review, we discussed about the economically important viral diseases of sheep and goats and also other viral diseases including enteritis of young lambs and kids, sheep pulmonary adenomatosis and dyspnoea-wasting disease with specific reference to disease, laboratory diagnostics available particularly immunological diagnostic approaches and disease control measures or management with future perspectives.