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Development of a Microsphere-Based Serologic Multiplexed Fluorescent Immunoassay and a Reverse Transcriptase PCR Assay To Detect Murine Norovirus 1 Infection in Mice

Research Animal Diagnostic Laboratory, Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211,¹ Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110²

Received 24 June 2005/ Returned for modification 18 July 2005/ Accepted 9 August 2005

Murine norovirus 1 (MNV-1) is a newly recognized pathogen of mice that causes lethal infection in mice deficient in components of the innate immune response but not in wild-type 129 mice. In this study, in vitro-propagated MNV-1 was used as antigen to develop a multiplexed fluorescent immunoassay (MFI) to detect antibodies to MNV-1 in infected mice. The MNV-1 MFI was 100% specific and 100% sensitive in detecting anti-MNV-1 antibody in sera from experimentally infected mice. Testing of a large number of mouse serum samples (n = 12,639) submitted from contemporary laboratory mouse colonies in the United States and Canada revealed that 22.1% of these sera contained antibodies to MNV-1, indicating infection with MNV-1 is widespread in research mice. In addition, a reverse transcriptase PCR primer pair with a sensitivity of 25 virus copies was developed and used to demonstrate that MNV-1 RNA could be detected in the spleen, mesenteric lymph node, and jejunum from some experimentally infected mice 5 weeks postinoculation. These diagnostic assays provide the necessary tools to define the MNV-1 infection status of research mice and to aid in the establishment of laboratory mouse colonies free of MNV-1 infection.