Equid alphaherpesvirus 1 (EHV-1) is an economically important virus, associated with
respiratory infection, late gestation abortion, neonatal death and myeloencephalopathy in
horses. The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that EHV-1 is present in the
nasopharynx and placentae of neonatal foals in the absence of clinical signs of infection. This
would suggest that vertical transmission of virus occurs in inter-epizootic periods: such
information could inform foaling management and the potential eradication of the virus by
vaccination.
Samples were collected from animals resident on a single farm in the Western Cape Province,
South Africa, which had not experienced a clinical outbreak of EHV-1 recently. Sterile swab
samples from 71 post-partum Thoroughbred mares, their healthy full-term foals and fetal
membranes were obtained and assayed for EHV-1 and EHV-4 nucleic acid using a duplex
quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR).
The null hypothesis for this study was that EHV-1 was not present in the nasopharynx and
placentae of new-born, viable and healthy foals. As no EHV-1 or EHV-4 nucleic acid was
detected on a duplex EHV-1/EHV-4 qPCR assay from the mare and foal nasal and fetal
membrane swabs, the null hypothesis was accepted. It was therefore concluded that there
was no detectable EHV-1 and -4 DNA in this population at the time of sampling. It was
speculated that this may have been due to the cyclical nature of EHV-1 infections. The
inclusion of additional breeding seasons on additional farms would be valuable for future
studies. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Production Animal Studies / MSc
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/67946 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Brown, Lara Jean |
| Contributors | Brown, Geoffrey James, larajeanbrown@gmail.com, Schulman, Martin L. |
| Publisher | University of Pretoria |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Rights | � 2018 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
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