Dourine is a venereal parasitic disease of equids transmitted primarily during mating. The protozoan responsible, Trypanosoma equiperdum, is diagnosed according to official standards using the complement fixation test (CFT). Within the scope of our role as the European Reference Laboratory (EURL) for equine diseases (excluding African horse sickness), inter-laboratory proficiency tests (ILPTs) for dourine CFT were conducted in 2015, 2018, and 2022 to assess the analytical performance of National Reference Laboratories (NRLs) across the European Union.
Each ILPT set consisted of equine sera either positive or negative for antibodies to Trypanosoma spp., collected from healthy, immunised, or experimentally infected animals. In total, 22 NRLs took part in one or more rounds. The proportion of laboratories achieving perfect agreement (100%) with the reference results was 57%, 90%, and 80% in 2015, 2018, and 2022, respectively.
Findings from these ILPTs confirmed the importance of harmonising the detection limits of the CFT and demonstrated the ongoing necessity for regular performance evaluation of NRLs to maintain network reliability. The results also emphasised the value of establishing a well-characterised serum biobank, both to improve the representativeness of ILPT samples and to facilitate the validation of alternative serological techniques for global dourine monitoring.
