The Detection of Rift Valley Fever Virus by a Tissue Culture Fluorescein-Labeled Antibody Method.

The diagnosis of RVF is presently confirmed by 1 or a combination of the following techniques: isolation of the virus (Findlay, 1932), serum neutralization (Brown et al, 1957), complement fixation (Brown and Findlay, 1932), hemagglutination inhibition (Mims and Mason, 1956), and the precipitation reaction in agar plates (Weiss, 1957). Iwasa (1959) has described the detection of complement-fixing antigen of RVF virus in cell cultures using the indirect fluorescent antibody technique. The present study involved the application of the direct fluorescent antibody technique (FAT) for the detection of RVF virus in 2 tissue culture cell lines and tissue sections from infected mice and lambs. The fluorescent and tissue culture techniques were combined to provide for the rapid detection and identification of the virus.