Comparative evaluation of nine lateral flow assays for FIV antibody detection using an in-house ELISA as a reference method

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) induces immunosuppression in affected cats, increasing susceptibility to chronic and secondary infections. Rapid and accurate detection of FIV-specific antibodies is essential for effective clinical management and epidemiological monitoring. This study conducted a comparative evaluation of nine commercially available lateral flow assays (LFAs) for detecting FIV antibodies in whole blood, serum, or plasma, using a newly developed in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) as a reference method. All tested LFAs demonstrated 100% specificity. While Vet Expert new and VetFor achieved 100% across all metrics indicating the best performance, formal statistical comparison did not reveal significant differences between the evaluated kits. Overall, the results confirm that all tested LFAs offer comparable reliability. Importantly, our in-house ELISA exhibited 100% concordance for positive samples with the commercial ELISA treated as the reference standard, confirming its reliability as a comparator. These findings emphasize the importance of selecting high-performing diagnostic tools to ensure reliable FIV detection and effective disease control strategies.