Specific detection of GII-1 lineage of infectious bronchitis virus.

Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) is a worldwide prevalent RNA virus that causes highly contagious and economically devastating disease in chicken. The virus exists in many different genetic forms which made the disease control very difficult. The present study describes the development and validation of TaqMan probe-based real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (real-time RT-PCR) targeting the S1 coding region of S gene characteristic for the GII-1 lineage (formerly the D1466-like variant) of IBV. These strains are quite different from other European IBV belonging to different lineages of the GI genotype. The developed method was 30-fold more sensitive than used so far for standard nested RT-PCR with detection limit of 56 RNA copies per reaction. The specificity of the assay was also evaluated with a panel of different poultry pathogens. Repeatability and reproducibility of the method was very high with coefficients of variation lower than 4%. One hundred and twenty-seven IBV-positive samples were tested by this method and GII-1 strains were detected in four of them (3·15%) which indicate a decrease in the GII-1 IBV prevalence in Poland. The assay was proven to be a valuable tool for rapid diagnosis of GII-1 lineage of IBV strains and moreover it enabled the monitoring of viral loads which can be used to assess disease progression.

SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: This study reports a TaqMan probe-based real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (real-time RT-PCR) for rapid and accurate identification of GII-1 lineage (formerly D1466-like variant) of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV). The assay revealed to be more sensitive than standard nested RT-PCR assay, previously used for this purpose. The developed assay has been tested on numerous field samples and revealed 3·15% prevalence of this lineage of IBV in Polish chicken population. Moreover, this new assay enables the assessment of viral load measurement which might be useful for epidemiology and pathogenesis studies.