Molecular detection of Viral diarrhea in Rabbits

Sakr, Nabila Ahmed; Abdelnaser, Amal H. T; ElBorai, Ibrahim M.; El-Habbaa, Ayman Said

doi:10.21608/bvmj.2023.214177.1667

Molecular detection of Viral diarrhea in Rabbits

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Departments of Avian and Rabbit Diseases ,Faculty of veterinary Medicine,Moshtohor,Benha University ,Egypt.

² Department of Avian and Rabbit Diseases ,Faculty of veterinary Medicine,Moshtohor,Benha University ,Egypt.

³ Virology Department, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Benha University, Moshtohour, Kalubeya

10.21608/bvmj.2023.214177.1667

Abstract

Enteric diseases of rabbits represent major problem in rabbit production, causing severe losses. Losses occur as result of mortalities and decreased conversion indexes. Diarrhea in rabbits occurs due to several causes but our study gave attention to viral causes as: Astrovirus, Coronavirus (CoV), Rotavirus (RV) and Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus (RHDV). In our study 140 samples were collected from commercial farms located at Menofia and Qalyubia governorates, Egypt during period from October 2020 to May 2021. Our study focused on live and dead rabbits showed diarrhea at age of 7 days up to 150 days age the most apparent symptoms are diarrhea and the post mortem examination of dead ones, we found that presence of localized area of necrosis in different organs and splenomegaly. All samples in the current research came up negative for Astrovirus ,Corona virus and Rota virus using Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) and some samples were positive for RHDV which was detected in liver and intestinal samples of dead rabbits with enterocolitis, we perform Sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of the VP60 gene of the RHDV strain ,which showed that it is related to RHDV2. Genetic analysis of our strain (RHV-Egypt-BenhaF954-2022) is clustered with G1.2/RHDV2/b strains with homology 97.1%. Homology with Egyptian classical strains were 96.6% with G1.1C/RHDV and 87.6% with G1.1a/RHDVa. The genetic diversity between the study obtained strain and other reference RHDV strain is indicative to probability of antigenic diversity.

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