African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) play an important role in the maintenance of the SAT
types of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in southern Africa. These long-term carriers
mostly become sub-clinically infected, maintaining the disease and posing a threat to
other susceptible wildlife and domestic species. During an unrelated bovine tuberculosis
experiment using captive buffalo in the Kruger National Park (KNP), an outbreak of
SAT-1 occurred and was further investigated. The clinical signs were recorded and all
animals demonstrated significant weight loss and lymphopenia that lasted 100 days. In addition, the mean cell volume and mean cell haemoglobin values were significantly
higher than before the outbreak started. Virus was isolated from several buffalo over a
period of 167 days post infection and the molecular clock estimated to be 3 × 10−5
nucleotide substitutions per site per day. Seven amino acid changes occurred of which
four occurred in hypervariable regions previously described for SAT-1. The genetic
relationship of the outbreak virus was compared to buffalo viruses previously obtained
from the KNP but the phylogeny was largely unresolved, therefore the relationship of this
outbreak strain to others isolated from the KNP remains unclear.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:tut/oai:encore.tut.ac.za:d1000818 |
Date | 09 July 2007 |
Creators | Vosloo, W, de Klerk, LM, Boshoff, CI, Botha, B, Dwarka, RM |
Publisher | Veterinary Microbiology |
Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Text |
Format | |
Rights | Veterinary Microbiology |
Relation | ISI Science Citation Index |
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