Development of a Droplet Digital PCR Method for Detection of Porcine Circovirus 4

Overview

Journal BMC Vet Res

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialty Veterinary Medicine

Date 2023 Aug 23

PMID 37608311

Authors

Yangkun Liu

Xinru Zhang

Xueying Han

Jiaxing Liu

Lunguang Yao

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Porcine circovirus 4 (PCV4), a newly emerging virus that was first discovered in 2019, may pose a potential threat to the pig industry. Droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) is an absolute quantitative method that has high sensitivity and accuracy. In this study, we developed a novel ddPCR assay to detect PCV4. Furthermore, we evaluated the detection limit, sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility of the ddPCR and TaqMan real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) and tested 160 clinical samples to compare the detection rate of the two methods.

Results: The detection limit for ddPCR was 0.54 copies/µL, 10.6 times greater sensitivity than qPCR. Both ddPCR and qPCR assays exhibited good linearity and repeatability, and the established ddPCR method was highly specific for PCV4. The results of clinical sample testing showed that the positivity rate of ddPCR (5.6%) was higher than that of qPCR (4.4%).

Conclusions: This study successfully developed a sensitive, specific and repeatable ddPCR assay for PCV4 detection, which can be widely used in clinical diagnosis of PCV4 infections.

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