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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Apr 1997, 937-943, Vol 35, No. 4
F Li, HE Drummer, N Ficorilli, MJ Studdert and BS Crabb
Equine rhinovirus 1 (ERhV1) is a recognized cause of acute febrile
respiratory disease in horse, although the virus is rarely isolated from
such animals, despite seroprevalence rates as high as 50% in some horse
populations. Recently, ERhV1 has been shown to be most closely related to
foot-and-mouth disease virus, raising questions as to its disease
associations in horses. We report that ERhV1 infection was the likely cause
of two separate outbreaks of severe febrile respiratory disease which
involved more than 20 horses. Attempts to isolate ErhV1 from nasopharyngeal
swabs by conventional cell culture methods were unsuccessful, in that
cytopathology was not observed. Viral antigen was detected by
immunofluorescence assay in the cytoplasm of cells infected with 10 of 15
nasopharyngeal swab samples, indicating the presence and presumably
replication of ERhV1. A rise in serum neutralizing antibody titer between
acute- and convalescent-phase sera confirmed that ERhV1 was causatively
associated with one of the outbreaks. ERhV1 RNA was detected in
nasopharyngeal swabs collected from all horses during the acute phase of
disease by reverse transcription-PCR. Nucleotide sequencing of amplified
products showed that within each outbreak a single strain of ERhV1 was
involved but that distinct viruses were involved in each outbreak. A
retrospective study of samples from nine other outbreaks of respiratory
disease in horses suggested ERhV1 etiology in at least two of these. We
conclude that the relative importance of ERhV1 as a cause of acute febrile
respiratory disease in horses has been underestimated due to failure in
many instances to isolate virus by conventional cell culture methods.
Copyright © 1997 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Identification of noncytopathic equine rhinovirus 1 as a cause of acute febrile respiratory disease in horses
Center for Equine Virology, School of Veterinary Science, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
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