1High Security Animal Disease Laboratory, Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Anand Nagar, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh-462021, India
2Department of Infectious Diseases and Parasitology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Komensky 73, Kosice, Slovak Republic.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the International Conference of Indian Virological Society on “Emerging and Re-emerging viral Diseases of the Tropics and Subtropics” at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India, December 11–14, 2007.
Since cattle are widely infected by bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) in India, we searched for pestivirus infection in yaks. Of 71 pure and crossbred yaks from Himalayan region, the pestivirus antigen was detected by Ag-ELISA in three animals. Pestivirus in leukocyte and cell culture isolated virus samples originating from positive yaks was also confirmed by RT-PCR using panpestivirus specific primers selected from 5′-untranslated region (5′ UTR). The 5′ UTR, Npro and E2 regions were sequenced and used for genetic typing. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that pestiviruses detected in three Himalayan yaks were similar genetically belonging to BVDV-1. Antigenic characterisation of yak pestivirus also confirmed the typing as BVDV-1. This is the first report on the identification of BVDV type 1 in yaks.
