National Reference Laboratory for Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis (IBR)

• The National Reference Laboratory (NRL) for IBR is entrusted with ensuring and permanent control of laboratory diagnostics of infectious bovine rhinotracheitis carried out in the Czech Republic. It verifies the specificity, sensitivity and expediency of the use of individual laboratory diagnostic methods and is a professional guarantor of the level of activity and reliability of results achieved in other veterinary and diagnostic laboratories of the State Veterinary Administration
• NRL for IBR contributes to the quality assurance of tasks defined by "Methodology of animal health control and vaccination" (MKZ) and direct, partial requirements of private veterinarians and cattle breeders
• for other interested veterinary institutions as well as for practicing veterinarians and breeders, it is a source of new information and knowledge that can be used for ongoing expertly based innovation of health programs and anti-infection provisions

Diagnostic activity:

• routine laboratory diagnostics of IBR
• confirmation of examination results of diagnostic laboratories
• serological and virological differential diagnosis of bovine herpesvirus imitating post-vaccination antibodies against IBR (bovine herpesvirus 2 - detection of antibodies by the ELISA method, bovine herpesvirus 4 - detection of antibodies by the ELISA method and detection of the virus genome by the PCR method, bovine herpesvirus 5 - detection of antibodies by the VNT test)
• definitive verification of questionable and epizootologically unexpected results (e.g. occurrence of positive cases in IBR-free or IBR-recovered farms)
• preparation of standard diagnostic components (positive, limit, negative samples)
• maintenance of isolated and reference strains of the IBR virus and their long-term storage

Control activity:

• preparation of methodological instructions for performing diagnostic tests and determining the method of their uniform use
• verification of the quality, sensitivity and specificity of the used diagnostic kits
• control of IBR diagnostic results performed in other veterinary laboratories, preparation of sets of control, reference samples of blood sera and milk with defined positivity
• organization, provision and evaluation of the results of circular laboratory tests within the Czech Republic

Consulting activity:

• consultations focused on how to interpret laboratory test results and their optimal use in practice
• monitoring of professional literature related to the topic of bovine herpesvirus infections (differential diagnosis of BHV-2, BHV-4, BHV-5)
• preparation of documents for the update and innovation of principles of IBR diagnosis and prevention used in Methodology of animal health control and vaccination
• cooperation with the NRL of other member states (Germany, Slovakia, Austria) and the OIE reference laboratory Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (Germany)
• consultation in the preparation of health programs in farms with different breeding technologies and with different numbers of animals