Antibody prevalence of hog cholera, bovine viral diarrhoea and Aujeszky's disease virus in wild boars in northern Germany.

During the hunting season 1990/1991 a total of 841 blood samples was collected from shot wild boar corresponding to about 2.11% of the total hunting bag in Lower Saxony. All the sera were screened for neutralizing antibodies (nAb) to hog cholera virus (HCV) and bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV) by direct neutralizing peroxidase linked antibody (NPLA) assay. For the detection of antibodies (Ab) against HCV a Complex Trapping Blocking (CTB) ELISA was used. Cytotoxic sera were retested using an indirect immunoperoxidase technique. Additionally all sera were tested for antibodies to Aujeszky's disease virus (ADV) in a commercial indirect ELISA and 722 sera for ADV nAb in a virus neutralization test (VNT) with and without the addition of guinea pig complement. Screening of 841 sera yielded six sera neutralizing HCV strain ALFORT/187 and two sera with a positive CTB-ELISA reaction. A total of seven sera not identical with the HCV seropositive sera yielded BVDV neutralizing antibodies. The majority of HCV nAb positive samples were found in a region close to the former border to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) west of the State of Sachsen-Anhalt. Screening for ADV detected five sera positive in ELISA amongst 12 sera yielding nAb against ADV. Positive samples were obtained in the regions of Brunswick, Lüneburg and Hannover.