Introduction

Canine parvoviral enteritis is an acute highly contagious life-threatening infection; therefore, laboratorial diagnosis is essential for screening diarrheic puppies in order to prevent infection of susceptible contact animals.

Objectives

To evaluate the rapid laboratory tests most commonly used for CPV diagnosis: hemagglutination test (HA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Methods

A total of 97 fecal samples from unvaccinated (36) and vaccinated (61) diarrheic puppies up to two years of age, collected between April 2013 and July 2014, were tested. The population comprises both mixed (68/97) and purebred (29/97) dogs.

Results

It may be concerning that about 38%–53% of dogs with suggestive clinical signs of CPV infection may not be positive for CPV with HA, so those samples should be tested by more sensitive and specific techniques such as PCR to improve the accuracy of CPV diagnosis. Results of HA test, when compared to PCR, are found to have low sensitivity (72%) (p < 0.05).

Conclusion

HA has been used for CPV screening due to the ease of implementation and low cost. In this study, there was a poor correlation between HA and PCR since samples considered HA-negative were found to contain virus DNA.