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A semi-quantitative serological method to assess the potency of inactivated rabies vaccine for veterinary use

Virologica Sinica volume 27, pages 259–264 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

Potency is one of the most important indexes of inactivated vaccines. A number of methods have been established to assay the potency, of which the NIH test and single-dose mouse protection test are the “prescribed methods”. Here, we report a method to semi-quantitatively assay the potency of an inactivated rabies vaccine, which uses fewer animals and takes less time to complete. Depending on the quality requirements of a vaccine (e.g. minimum potency), a rabies reference vaccine is, for example, diluted to the minimum potency, and 50 μL of the dilution is taken to inoculate 10 mice. The same amount of the test rabies vaccine is inoculated into another 10 mice. After two weeks, all mice are bled and serum samples are assayed for viral neutralizing antibody by the fluorescent antibody virus neutralization (FAVN) test. By comparing the median and interquartile range of antibody titers of the reference vaccine with those of the test vaccine, the test vaccine potency can be semi-quantitatively judged as to whether it is in accord with the required quality. The reliability of this method was also confirmed in dogs. The procedure can be recommended for batch potency testing during inactivated rabies vaccine production.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Epidemiology, Military Veterinary Research Institute, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Changchun, 130122, China

    Ye Liu, Shoufeng Zhang, Fei Zhang & Rongliang Hu

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  1. Ye Liu
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  2. Shoufeng Zhang
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  3. Fei Zhang
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  4. Rongliang Hu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rongliang Hu.

Additional information

Foundation items: The research was funded by the China National “863” Program (Approval No.2011AA10A212) and Special Fund for Agro-Scientific Research in the Public Interest (Approval No. 201203056).

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Liu, Y., Zhang, S., Zhang, F. et al. A semi-quantitative serological method to assess the potency of inactivated rabies vaccine for veterinary use. Virol. Sin. 27, 259–264 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12250-012-3260-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12250-012-3260-y

Keywords

  • Rabies
  • Inactivated vaccine
  • Potency assay
  • Semi-quantitative method