National reference laboratory for diseases caused by capripoxviruses (lumpy skin disease and sheep and goat pox)
The national reference laboratory for diseases caused by capripoxviruses (lumpy skin disease and sheep and goat pox) was authorised on 1 March 2018 by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic. Diagnosing capripoxvirus infectious animal diseases was implemented as early as 2016 at the SVI department for serology and virology; from the same year, our laboratory has been regularly participating in inter-laboratory comparison testing.
To provide direct evidence of virus, our NRL has several real-time PCR (even with the possibility of direct genotyping), conventional PCR and partial genome-sequencing of capripoxviruses methods available. To provide evidence of antibodies, we use the ELISA test to detect capripoxvirus antibodies. The Czech NRL closely cooperates with the EURL for capripoxvirus infections, which falls under the Sciensano organisation based in Brussels.
