Identification and phylogenetic analysis of clade C Avipoxvirus in a fowlpox outbreak in exotic psittacines in southern Brazil

Abstract

Fowlpox is one of the oldest diseases reported in birds. The causative genus Avipoxvirus affects ~232 domestic and wild species. We present herein the history, clinical findings, and macroscopic and histologic lesions caused by a clade C poxvirus in an exotic psittacine breeding colony in southern Brazil. Clinical signs included yellow nodular lesions at the commissure of the beak and on the periocular skin, loss of appetite, and death. Fifty birds were autopsied, and fragments of periocular skin, tongue, and trachea were examined histologically, which revealed hyperkeratosis associated with eosinophilic intracytoplasmic inclusion bodies. Tracheal fragments and periocular skin were subjected to nested PCR and phylogenetic analyses. The sequenced strain showed 99.58% identity with the nucleotide sequences of Avipoxvirus strains AY53011, KC018069, AM050383, and AM05382 isolated from birds in Germany, United States, and United Kingdom. The strain was grouped under clade C, which represents isolates exclusively from the Psittacidae family. The infection caused by clade C Avipoxvirus in the exotic psittacines examined ( Platycercus sp. and Psephotus haematonotus) demonstrates the circulation of this clade in this breeding colony.

Pathological, molecular and phylogenic study of fowlpox virus in domesticated chickens of Tikrit City, Iraq

“…Histological hyperkeratosis, intracytoplasmic inclusions, and hyperplasia of the skin described by the current study were widely confirmed with FPV (Beytut & Haligür, 2007;Murer et al, 2018). Researchers used lesions of poxvirus for isolation, purification, and a histopathological marker (Bayati, 2017).…”

“…Poxvirus causes chorioallantoic membrane hemorrhage, necrosis, hyperplasia, and eosinophilic intracytoplasmic inclusion bodies (Sharma et al, 2019;Soud et al, 2020). Recently, the phylogenetic analysis included a phylogenetic tree, considered a powerful tool to classify FPV isolates worldwide (Murer et al, 2018). Many reports performing FPV phylogenetic analysis used the conservative P4b gene, which was published in the late nineteenth century (Binns et al, 1989).…”

Molecular Survey of Pathogens in Wild Amazon Parrot Nestlings: Implications for Conservation

“…Negative results for avipoxvirus were also reported in 29 captive A. vinacea using the same primers in a conventional PCR [38]. However, avipoxvirus outbreaks have been reported in captive native [15] and exotic [39] Psittaciformes in Brazil, showing low and high mortality rates, respectively. BFDV has been recently detected in captive exotic and native species [17,18] in Brazil.…”

First report of Psittacid Avipoxvirus in Agapornis in Mexico

“…Additionally, the present case may help in assessing the risk for different species of susceptible exotic parrots, such as the African gray parrot (Psittacus erithacus) and the monjita (Myiopsitta monachus) (20,15,11,32,36) or very susceptible parrots, such as Agapornis, Platycercus, Polytelis and Neophema (35,14,5,24), which are found in Mexico.…”