Techniques for diagnosing viral diseases of salmonid fish

Abstract

Cell culture for amplification and the techniques most used for identificaiton of salmonid viruses - neutralization, immunofluorescence and, to a lesser extent, immunoperoxidase, complement fixation, agglutination, electron microscopy, immunodiffusion or radioimmunoassay - may soon be replaced by other techniques such as enzyme immunoassays (immunodot and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, ELISA) and hybridization with DNA probes. It is expected that developments in monoclonal antibodies and amplification by the polymerase chain reaction will increase sensitivity of enzyme immunoassays and DNA hybridizations, respectively. -from Authors