Establishment of serological test to detect antibody against ferret coronavirus

MINAMI, Shohei; TERADA, Yutaka; SHIMODA, Hiroshi; TAKIZAWA, Masaki; ONUMA, Mamoru; OTA, Akihiko; OTA, Yuichi; AKABANE, Yoshihito; TAMUKAI, Kenichi; WATANABE, Keiichiro; NAGANUMA, Yumiko; KANAGAWA, Eiichi; NAKAMURA, Kaneichi; OHASHI, Masanari; TAKAMI, Yoshinori; MIWA, Yasutsugu; TANOUE, Tomoaki; OHWAKI, Masao; OHTA, Jouji; UNE, Yumi; MAEDA, Ken

Epizootic catarrhal enteritis (EcE), a new enteric disease of domestic ferrets (Mustelo putorius furo), was first described in the United States in the early 1990s [11] . A novel alphacoronavirus, ferret coronavirus (FRcoV), was detected as the causative agent of EcE in 2000 and designated as ferret enteric coronavirus (FREcV) [11, 12] . Ferrets with EcE show general clinical signs including lethargy, anorexia and vomiting, and characteristic signs with foul-smelling, green mucous-laden diarrhea [12] . FRcoV was also reported as the causative agent of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP)-like disease in 2006, and the virus was designated as ferret systemic coronavirus (FRScV) [2] [3] [4] . Ferrets with FIP-like disease show characteristic clinical signs of large palpable intraabdominal masses like dry type of FIP [2] [3] [4] . FRcoVs were divided into two genotypes, I and II, based on differences in the spike (S) gene, and it was suggested that genotype I was associated with FIP-like disease and genotype II was with EcE [13] . However, we previously showed that there was no significant relationship between the genotypes of FRCoV and disease in Japan [9] . In addition, genotype I FRcoV was also detected from many asymptomatic ferrets in the Netherlands [6] . The relationship between genotypes of FRcoV and clinical symptoms remains unclear.