Comparative efficacy of different primers for detection of chicken anemia virus by PCR in layer chickens

Chicken anaemia virus (CAV), a member of genus Gyrovirus of the family Circoviridae, is the causative agent of Chicken infectious anaemia (CIA), an emerging infectious disease mainly of young chickens. A total 75 clinical samples from 15 layer birds each of bone marrow, spleen, liver, thymus and bursa of fabricious suspected for CIA were collected and processed for DNA extraction. PCR amplification using four different primers VP1F/VP1R, VP2F/VP2R, O3F/O3R and O1F/PshA1R were selected to amplify different regions of CAV including VP1 and VP2 gene segments. All the 75 samples turned out to be positive by PCR with at least one primer set. PCR worked well can be adopted easily for efficient detection of CAV from affected chicken tissues. Primer pairs VP2F/VP2R and O1F/PshA1R are more efficient in detecting CAV than the primer pairs VP1F/VP1R and O3F/O3R. VP1 gene based primers were least effective.