An ELISA to Detect Serum Antibodies to the Salivary Gland Toxin of Ixodes holocyclus Neumann in Dogs and Rodents.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Parasitology Research Volume 2011, Article ID 283416, 6 pages doi:10.1155/2011/283416 Research Article An ELISA to Detect Serum Antibodies to the Salivary Gland Toxin of Ixodes holocyclus Neumann in Dogs and Rodents S. Hall-Mendelin,1, 2 P. O’Donoghue,1 R. B. Atwell,3 R. Lee,1, 4 and R. A. Hall1 1 School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia 2 Public Health Virology, Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services, Coopers Plains, QLD 4108, Australia 3 School of Veterinary Science, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia 4 Westmead Clinical School, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia Correspondence should be addressed to R. A. Hall, roy.hall@.au Received 3 January 2011; Accepted 13 March 2011 Academic Editor: Domenico Otranto Copyright © 2011 S. Hall-Mendelin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Ixodes holocyclus tick causes paralysis in up to 10,000 companion and domestic animals each year in Australia. Treatment requires the removal of the parasite and the administration of a commercial tick antiserum that is prepared from hyperimmune dogs. Each batch of this serum is initially tested for toxin-neutralising potency in a mouse bioassay that is expensive, time consuming, and subjective. With the aim of developing a rapid in vitro assay to replace the bioassay, we used a partially purified antigen prepared from I. holocyclus salivary glands to develop an ELISA to detect toxin-reactive antibodies in hyperimmune dog