|
PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Japanese encephalitis (JE) is a mosquito borne viral infection of brain. It is prevalent worldwide, most prominent in eastern and southern Asia. Domestic pigs and wild birds are reservoirs of the virus; humans get the disease through mosquito bite that carries the virus. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to uncover the prevalence of antibodies to Japanese encephalitis virus and its nucelic acid in naturally infected pigs of Punjab by commercial indirect ELISA kit and Reverse Trancriptase-PCR (RT-PCR). A total of 364 sera/blood samples were collected from pigs presented for slaughter at small slaughter shops located in Ludhiana and Jalandhar districts of Punjab and at a municipal corporation abattoir in Chandigarh union territory of North India. The serum samples were screened for the presence of JEV antibodies using commercially available indirect ELISA kit and seropositive samples were screened for the presence of virus RNA by RT-PCR. The present study detected anti JEV IgG antibodies in 17.3 % (63/364) pig sera samples. Highest seropositivity of 23.30 % (95% CI 29.7-18%) was observed in pigs slaughtered at Chandigarh followed by 10 % (95% CI 19.1-6.6%) and 9.25 % (95% CI 15-5.6%) seroprevalence from Jalandhar and Ludhiana districts, respectively. RT-PCR targeting diagnostic envelop gene revealed 31.74 % (20/63) molecular positivity in seropositive pigs with an overall 5.49 % (20/364) molecular prevalence of JEV in pigs from Punjab. This study concluded that Japanese encephalitis is prevalent in Punjab which put a state at a risk of zoonotic transmission to human.