The cost effective easy competitive ELISA (CEE-cELISA) available for monitoring protective immunity against the rabies virus in sera of humans and dogs.

The rabies vaccinations coverage has been reported as 70-80% of dogs in annual reports. However, there are still outbreaks of rabies in humans and dogs in Thailand, which indicate the necessity of ensuring seroprevalence in vaccinated dogs and efficacy of human immunization. The cost effective easy competitive ELISA (CEE-cELISA) was developed for monitoring protective immunity against the rabies virus in human and dog sera by using the monoclonal antibody clone 1-46-12, which recognized a conformation epitope of rabies G protein, with an ELISA plate coated with whole viral antigen of commercial vaccine. The sero- titer measured by the CEE-cELISA and the gold standard, rapid fluorescent focus inhibition test (RFFIT), detecting the neutralizing antibody, showed a very strong correlation with the R-value of 0.958 and 0.931 in humans and dogs, respectively. These correlations were detected in the sera of humans and dogs at up to 100 IU/ml and 10 IU/ml, respectively. This CEE-cELISA could be an alternative assay for evaluating mass rabies vaccination rapidly and at very low cost as well as detecting rabies antibodies in sera in the same test in not only humans, but also other animal species.