Circovirus in domestic and wild carnivores: An important opportunistic agent?

Abstract

Circoviruses are relatively novel pathogens with increased importance in canids. In this study, we first screened the presence of dog circovirus (DogCV) by molecular methods from a total number of 389 internal organ samples originating from 277 individuals of domestic dogs and wild animals including wolves, foxes and badgers. All the animals originated from Central-Southern Italy, specifically from Abruzzi and Molise regions, areas hosting several natural parks. DogCV was detected in 9/34 wolves (P=26.4%; IC 95%: 14.6-43.1%), 8/209 dogs (P=3.8%; IC 95%: 1.9-7.3%), 0/24 foxes (P=0%; IC 95%: 0-13.8%), 1/10 badgers (P=10%; IC 95%: 1.79-40.4%). However, all DogCV positive animals were shown to be infected at least by an additional key pathogen, including canine distemper virus (CDV) and canine parvovirus type 2. All wolves, but one, presenting DogCV in the internal tissues suffered from CDV infection. The DNA purified from 17 DogCV infected organs was used for whole genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis.

A molecular survey for selected viral enteropathogens revealed a limited role of Canine circovirus in the development of canine acute gastroenteritis

“…Overall, 81.69% of the CanineCV-positive samples tested positive for another pathogen. Compared with the controls, co-infections were remarkably related with disease (p < 0.00001), which was in agreement with the results reported in previous studies (Gizzi et al, 2014;Li et al, 2013;Zaccaria et al, 2016).…”

“…CanineCV was strongly associated to the occurrence of enteric disease only in co-infections with other, well-recognised pathogens (CPV or CCoV). While previous reports accounted for a primary role of CanineCV in the development of clinical disease (Li et al, 2013;Decaro et al, 2014), subsequent studies suggested that this virus can act as entheropathogen mainly when associated to other pathogens (Hsu et al, 2016;Thaiwong et al, 2016;Zaccaria et al, 2016). Our study has shown a high frequency of detection of CanineCV in diarrheal dogs (32.42%), similar to that reported in a recent study from China (28%) (Hsu et al, 2016) but greater with respect to a previous survey conducted in USA (11.3%) (Li et al, 2013) and to two very recent studies conducted in Germany (20.1%, Gentil et al, 2017;3.64%, Anderson et al, 2017).…”

“…CanineCV has been firstly reported in serum samples from dogs with no clinical history (Kapoor et al, 2012). Subsequent reports suggest that CanineCV is circulating in dogs, causing haemorrhages (Li et al, 2013) or severe gastroenteritis Taiwong et al, 2016;Zaccaria et al, 2016). However, the exact role of this virus in the development of clinical disease is still unclear.…”

Duck “beak atrophy and dwarfism syndrome” disease complex: Interplay of novel goose parvovirus-related virus and duck circovirus?

“…DuCV infection may cause immunosuppression in ducks and the predisposed ducks are prone to be coinfected by other bacterial and viral pathogens (Soike et al., ; Zhang et al., ). The coinfection cases of parvovirus and circovirus were detected in pigs (Sun et al., ), canines (Anderson et al., ; Thaiwong, Wise, Maes, Mullaney, & Kiupel, ) and wild carnivores (Zaccaria et al., ). However, little is known about parvovirus coinfection with circovirus in ducks.…”

Porcine Circoviruses and Xenotransplantation

“…Porcine circovirus 1 (PCV1) was first described at the Robert Koch Institute, Berlin [19]. Other members of this family are PCV2, several avian circoviruses [18], and recently new circoviruses have been isolated from mammals: bat [20,21], dogs [22,23,24,25], mink [26,27], and others. Circoviruses are non-enveloped spherical (16–18 nm) particles (Figure 1) with a single-stranded and circular small DNA genome.…”