الفهرس 
Cover Page Title in EnglishOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Duck viral enteritis (DVE) or duck plague (DP) is an acute, highly contagious disease of ducks, geese, and swans of all ages, characterized by sudden death, high mortality (particularly among older ducks), and hemorrhages and necrosis in internal organs. It has been reported in domestic and wild waterfowl in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa, resulting in limited to serious economic losses on domestic duck farms and sporadic, limited to massive die-offs in wild waterfowl.
The identity of the virus can be confirmed by neutralization tests using specific antiserum to inhibit pathological changes in the duck embryos or the cytopathological effects in the cell cultures, or by direct or indirect immunofluorescence tests on infected cell cultures. Application of these tests requires the presence of specific antiserum.
The present thesis was designed to prepare and evaluate DPV antiserum in different hosts and conjugation of such serum with flourescin isothiocyanate aiming to provide specific antiserum able to detect and identify DPV in accurate; sensitive and rapid manner with law cost as a local preparation.
The obtained experimental results through the present study showed that:
1-Estimation of serum proteins in the prepared anti-DP sera showed that rabbit serum had the levels of 5.45±0.11; 1.90±0.22 and 3.55±0.12 g/dl for total serum; albumin and globulin respectively; goat serum had the values; 5.80±0.11; 1.51±0.32 and 4.29±0.10 of g/dl for total serum; albumin and globulin respectively while Guinea pig serum had the levels of 5.35±0.13;1.19±15 and 4.16±10 g/dl for total serum; albumin and globulin respectively.
2-Rabbit; Guinea pigs and goat anti-DPV hyper immune sera were found to be free from foreign contaminants (aerobic and anaerobic bacteria; fungi and mycoplasma). These sera were titrated using SNT which revealed gradual increasing in DP antibodies recorded their peaks by the 5th week post animal immunization as 6.9 , 4.7 and 8 log2/ml in rabbit; Guinea pig and goat’s sera respectively showing that goat serum had the highest levels of DP antibodies.
3-DEV-infected and non-infected control vero cells fixed on cover slips were tested by direct FAT using ten-fold serial dilutions of the conjugated immunoglobulin’s. Results revealed that guinea pig, rabbit and goat anti-DEV Fluorescin-conjugated immunoglobulin’s showed clear strong positive reactions appear as apple green dots (photo 7) up to dilution of 1/100, 1/100 and 1/1000, respectively. Moderate positive reaction (photo 8) was obtained using 1/10000 dilution of rabbit conjugate while such degree was obtained with a dilution of 1/100000 using goat conjugate. Weak positive reaction (photo 9) was noticed with a dilution of 1/10000, 1/100000 and 1/1000000 of guinea pig, rabbit and goat conjugates, respectively. Negative reactions (photo 10) were obtained with further dilutions of the three conjugates as well as unconjugated sera.