Virological Investigation of Emerging Camel Disease in Ethiopia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2010-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The dromedary of East Africa particularly, Ethiopia has been suffering from different diseases
for the past so many years. Of the many diseases of camels that are rampant in the region, the
recently emerged camel disease with still unknown causes is the single most important disease.
This camel disease is the leading problem inflicting high morbidity and mortality among the
camel population. To this effect, isolation and characterization of the causative agent has of
paramount importance. This study was undertaken in the National Veterinary Institute
laboratory, Debre Zeit, Ethiopia from October 2009 - June 2010 to isolate and characterize the
viral agent from camel postmortem tissues collected during the outbreak of 2007 in Ethiopia.
The study was conducted on the basis of cell culture, degenerate oligonucleotide primed
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and laboratory animal assay. Virus isolation was attempted for
virus in Vero and Dubca cells; four specimens yielded cytopathic virus when inoculated onto the
Vero cell culture. The cytopathic effect (CPE) consisted of round floating cells, giant cells,
rounded refractive cells, ballooning of cells, sloughing, and some syncytia formation were
observed from day two to day seven post inoculation. The appearance of the CPE was looking
uniform among different purified tissue samples used for cell infection. The growth of virus was
confirmed by degenerate oligonucleotide primed PCR in which amplification was recorded
particularly, where extracted RNA was amplified, both from tissue and cell culture. The growth
of the virus after storage in -20 DC for days was lost while it can grow from +4 DC and -85 DC in
Vero cells. The cell culture suspension was injected to laboratory guinea pigs in which the
animals were observed to develop abnormal clinical signs that resulted in death. Although many
scientists suspected different known viruses for the cause of outbreak, the isolated virus was
confirmed to be out of adenovirus, morbillivirus, parainfluenza 1-3 and respiratory syncytial
virus groups. However, although the above known viruses were excluded, a variant of the above
viruses that can skip detection using previously known primers and other emerging viruses
might not be excluded.
Key words: Came l, Cell culture, Emerging disease, Molecular diagnosis, Viral etiologies, Virus
isolation.
Description
Keywords
Came l, Cell culture, Emerging disease, Molecular diagnosis, Viral etiologies, Virus isolation.