Review on Discriminatory Tests of Immune Reaction due to Infection and Vaccination (DIVA Test)

Abstract

In concern for animal diseases, the goal of vaccination is to prevent or reduce clinical diseases associated with the infectious agent, but it can also be used as a means of managing or eradicating a disease from a particular region. Therefore it is essential to differentiate immune responses due to vaccination compared to natural infection. It was to satisfy this requirement that the term Differentiation of Infected from Vaccinated Animals (DIVA) was coined in 1999 by Jan T van Oirschot. DIVA principle is based on a DIVA vaccine producing an antibody response that is different from the antibody response produced by the wild-type virus. The DIVA approach has been applied and proposed successfully to various diseases. Although considerable progress has been made to evaluate which different DIVA strategies are most likely to be applicable in the field, considerably more work needs to be done. If properly applied, DIVA vaccination strategies promise to provide new tools for the control and eradication of diseases.