Picobirnavirus detection in bovine and buffalo calves from foothills of Himalaya and Central India

Abstract

The present study describes detection of picobirnavirus (PBV) in faecal samples from bovine and buffalo calves employing the polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). A total of 136 faecal samples from buffalo (n = 122) and cow calves (n = 14) exhibiting clinical signs of diarrhoea and from healthy calves were collected during 2007-2010 from subtropical (central India) and tarai area of western temperate Himalayan foothills (Uttarakhand). The dsRNA nature of the virus was confirmed by nuclease treatment (RNase A, RNaseT1 and DNase 1). PAGE results confirmed 3.67% (5/136) positivity for PBV, showing a typical genomic migration pattern with two discrete bands with size of approximately 2.4 and 1.7 kbps for the larger and smaller segments, respectively. Among the five PBV samples identified, three were from buffalo calves and one from cow calf exhibiting clinical signs of acute diarrhoea, while one sample from non-diarrhoeic buffalo calf also showed the presence of PBV. None of the samples showed dual infection of rotavirus and PBV. The preliminary findings indicate sporadic incidences of PBV in bovine calves and emphasize the need for the development of better diagnostics for early detection and genetic characterization of these emerging isolates of farm animals of economic significance.

Prevalence, diagnosis, management and control of important diseases of ruminants with special reference to indian scenario

“…PBVs have been designated as genogroup I (GGI), genogroup II (GGII) and genogroup III (GGIII) based on sequence analysis of genome segment 2. In India, PBV was for the first time detected in bovine in West Bengal in (Ghosh et al, 2009) and subsequently from central India (Malik et al, 2011b). A PBV strain isolated from western Maharashtra from a buffalo calf showed huge genetic divergence (Malik et al, 2013a).…”

Animal Picobirnavirus

“…Later, PBVs have been identified in faecal specimens of humans practically worldwide [3, 6, 7, 14, 26-29, 51, 55, 56, 61, 68, 76]. PBVs were also detected in faeces of a wide variety of farm mammals, birds, wild animals and birds kept in captivity, etc., viz., pigs [2,4,16,31,34,50,56,67], calves [10,15,35,53,54,61,77,79], rabbits and guinea pigs [25,43,52,65], bats [86], red fox [8], avian such as chickens & poults [1,49,59,69,73], and other wild animals kept in captivity like Giant Anteaters [45]; giant cats like Lion, Puma, Jaguar and Geoffroy's cat [37], sea lion [84], human primates such as Orangutan, wild birds such as American Ostrich, gloomy pheasant, Chinese goose [57], goat kids and lambs [60], donkeys [57,58], foals [9,30], laboratory non-human primates such as rhesus, pigtailed macaques and cynomolgus monkeys [83] and dogs [17,23,81], rats [23,64], snakes [23] and turkeys …”

“…Recently, PBV were detected in faeces of cow calves and buffalo calves with or without signs of diarrhea from subtropical and temperate Himalayan foothills of India [53]. PAGE screening resulted in 3.67 % PBV positivity.…”

Evolving views on enteric viral infections of equines: an appraisal of key pathogens

“…With the advancement of molecular diagnostic techniques such as RT-PCR (Ganesh et al, 2012;Malik et al, 2013;Takiuchi et al, 2016) and qRT-PCR (Malik, unpublished data) for picobirnaviruses, they have been detected in faecal and respiratory samples from over 20 animal species including rodents, aves and large animals like rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, giant ant eater, dogs, pigs, bovine calves, buffalo calves, foals camels, snakes worldwide and exhibit vast genetic diversity (Ganesh et al, 2011;Malik et al, 2011;Smits et al, 2011;Gillman et al, 2013;Malik et al, 2013;Malik et al, 2014;Ng et al, 2014;Ribeiro et al, 2014;Woo et al, 2014, Verma et al, 2015Takiuchi et al, 2016). Despite the broad host range, pathogenicity of PBVs alone or as co-infecting agents remains unclear.…”