Abstract
Monkey B virus (BV: BSL-4) is an alpha-herpesvirus and is closely related to other primate alpha-herpesviruses including human simplex viruses (HSV). BV causes mild or no symptoms in its natural hosts: macaque monkeys, but it causes fatal CNS infection in humans. A sero-test to discriminate anti-BV antibodies from HSV antibodies is required in accidental BV infections in HSV-positive humans.
We had established an ELISA employing a BVgD C-terminal peptide (BVgD-CP) with 11 amino acids, in which the undecapeptide was coupled covalently to plates and reported that the current BVgD-CP ELISA is BV-specific and useful to distinguish BV infections from other infections with related primate herpesviruses including HSV (Mitsunaga et al., Exp. Anim. 53: 229, 2004). Anti-BVgD-CP antibodies were detectable in serum/plasma samples from BV infected monkeys even mixed with HSV-positive human samples.
To examine the prevalence of anti-BVgD-CP antibodies, we applied serum/plasma samples from different troops/groups of rhesus, cynomolgus and Japanese macaques.
The frequency of anti-BVgD-CP antibodies among BV-positive monkey samples was different from species to species, troop to troop. The different detection rate of anti-BVgD-CP antibody in monkey species and troop is probably caused by the difference in MHC to present and recognize antigen molecules, and/ or by the difference in amino acid sequence of the gD C-terminal undecapeptide among these macaque BV strains.
