Development and Standardization of Dot - ELISA for Detection of Neospora caninum Antibodies in Cattle and Comparison with Standard Indirect ELISA and Direct Agglutination Test (DAT)

Neospora caninum is a protozoan parasite from phylum apicom­plexa and an important agent causing abortion in cattle which produce notable economic loss all around the world. Dot-Elisa was set up performing checker board procedure and then 178 sera of cattle examined with commercial indirect ELISA and direct agglutina­tion test (DAT) were also evaluated by dot-ELISA afterwards. Kappa statistical analysis revealed that Dot-ELISA has good agreements with ELISA as well as the DAT and also, Mc Nemar´s analyzing showed that this procedure has acceptable ability to discriminate positive results. Relative sensitiv­ity and specificity of Dot-ELISA were respectively 92.63% and 89.16% and 93.4% and 90.8% in comparison with ELISA and DAT. Since the dot-ELISA is easy, inexpensive and not needed high experi­ence to interpret the results, it is superior to ELISA and DAT when we aim to screen the cattle on the farm and slaughterhouses or when the laboratory equip­ment is not available.