On Jan. 24, 2014, InBios announced that it had licensed a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) West Nile Virus (WNV) diagnostic kit for horses and that it was commercially available to veterinary and reference laboratories in the U.S.

The West Nile Virus Antibody Test Kit, ELISA was developed at InBios using antigen reagents licensed from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and was manufactured at InBios’ licensed USDA facility in Seattle, Washington. This highly sensitive and specific ELISA kit detects IgM antibodies in equine serum to WNV derived recombinant antigen.

West Nile is a type of virus that can cause encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain. It is a reportable disease in the US in animals. The virus is transmitted by mosquitoes that acquire it from infected birds. Migrating birds may play a role in spreading the disease. Like humans, horses can become infected with West Nile Virus, but they are also dead end hosts and cannot spread the virus back to mosquitoes.

Clinical symptoms in horses have included listlessness, stumbling and uncoordination, weakness of limbs, ataxia, partial paralysis, or death. During the West Nile outbreak of 2012, confirmed equine cases of West Nile Virus in the United States surged to 627. In 2013, there were 338 confirmed equine cases of West Nile Virus. WNV has spread across the continent since its first detection in the in New York in 1999. There are now outbreaks every summer. Their severity has proven difficult to predict, but West Nile Virus is considered firmly established in the Unites States.