Correlation of blood lymphocyte nuclear pocket prevalence with enzootic bovine leukemia p24 viral antibody titers.

The quantitative relationship between radioimmunoassay serotiters to p24 enzootic bovine leukemia viral antigen and the prevalence of lymphocytic nuclear pockets (LNP) was studied in 554 clinically normal dairy cows and bulls. Of the animals, 69% were seronegative. Of the seronegative animals, 44% had no observed LNP, whereas 93% of the seronegative animals had less than 1% LNP. However, 2.3% of the seronegative animals had substantially increased (greater than 2%) numbers of LNP, and conversely, 24% of the seropositive animals had no observed LNP. Statistical evaluation of the data, using contingency table and regression methods, provide significant (P less than 0.0001) evidence for a positive association between LNP prevalence and p24 bovine leukemia viral serotiters. Although significant, the association was weak, and hence LNP number had little value for predicting serotiter.