Clinical and antigenic relationship between isolates of sheep and goat pox viruses

Abstract

Isolates of sheep pox and goat pox from Nigeria, Sudan, Kenya, Yemen Arab Republic, Turkey, Pakistan and India were inoculated into British breeds of sheep and goats. Although the isolates displayed a host preference the gross clinical pathology of the disease produced by the different isolates was indistinguishable. The Yemen, Nigeria and India isolates could not be distinguished using homologous and heterologous antisera in neutralisation tests. Animals that had recovered from infection with one isolate were resistant to challenge with any of the other isolates and a single vaccine for use against sheep pox and goat pox is described. The classification of the malignant pox diseases of sheep and goats is discussed.

The characterization of African strains of capripoxvirus

“…In South Africa capripox has never been reported in sheep or goats. However, the extremely close antigenic (Capstick, 1959) and biochemical relationship between the viruses which cause LSD, sheep pox and goat pox, together with the observations that these viruses can infect and cause disease in more than one species of host (Kitching & Taylor, 1985) and may recombine in the field indicate that they are all strains of a single species of virus. The enigma of LSD is its relatively recent origin compared with sheep pox and goat pox and why it has been restricted in its distribution to Sub-Saharan Africa.…”

“…The initial passage history of these strains had not been recorded, although all had been passaged at least once on lamb testis (LT) The freeze dried viruses were reconstituted with sterile distilled water and passaged in secondary cultures of LT cells as previously described (Kitching & Taylor, 1985 These were then thawed, the harvest centrifuged at 1000 g for 10 min, and the supernatant titrated and used as the inoculum. Aliquots of virus harvest from the first LT passage of each of the strains, including those not used for animal inoculation, were passaged three more times on LT cells.…”

“…However, until recently it has not been possible to distinguish between strains of capripoxvirus using standard laboratory tests, even when the behaviour of these strains in the field situation has clearly been different (Kitching & Taylor, 1985). The capripoxviruses cause sheep pox, goat pox and lumpy skin disease (Neethling) of cattle and are economically the most important group of poxviruses.…”

“…The capripoxviruses cause sheep pox, goat pox and lumpy skin disease (Neethling) of cattle and are economically the most important group of poxviruses. Most strains of capripoxvirus do not have absolute host specificity (Capstick, 1959;Kitching & Taylor, 1985) and while the majority of those examined showed a preference for growth in either sheep, goats or cattle, some strains had no obvious host preference. Strains also varied in their pathogenicity in different species and in different breeds (Capstick, 1959;Kitching & Taylor, 1985).…”

Capripoxvirus G-protein-coupled chemokine receptor: a host-range gene suitable for virus animal origin discrimination

“…This observation confirms a previous study, carried out by analysing DNA fragments resulting from DNA digestion with restriction enzymes, which highlighted the oddity of this Oman sheep strain . Atypical CaPV strains with intermediate profiles, such as SPPV24, GTPV4, 8 and 15, may account for some of the conflicting reports describing severe disease inducement in both small ruminant species, while others only indicate that one species is affected (Davies, 1976;Kitching et al, 1989;Kitching & Taylor, 1985).…”